


Too Many War Wounds

by with_the_monsters



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Brief oblique references to underage sex; none depicted in the story itself, F/M, Gen, Swearing, alcohol tw, drugs tw, smoking tw
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-02-10 04:28:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 39,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12904062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/with_the_monsters/pseuds/with_the_monsters
Summary: (And not enough wars).Teddy Lupin's having a rough go of it. There's the Malfoys suing his godfather for ownership of Grimmauld Place, which is only maybe 10% his fault, and it's a shit house besides so he can't understand the fuss. Then there's the Potter kids, all nutjobs, and somehow he's ended up partway responsible for them. Unfair. And don't even get him started on the Young Molly thing. They're friends, alright? Just friends.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on this story on and off for a couple of years now as the inspiration ebbs and flows, and decided that as Christmas is approaching it's time to say fuck it, throw caution to the wind, and post the damn thing. I've got 40,000 words written and just need to figure out the ending now, so stay tuned.
> 
> Chapters will contain individual warnings if necessary as I don't want to spoil things coming later in the tags. This chapter needs a warning for reference to a past sexual relationship between an adult and a teenager. It's brief, but it's there.
> 
> Please feel free to come say hi on Tumblr if you'd like to, I'd love to hear from you! You can find me at longclaws.tumblr.com. You can also find the Pinterest board for this story here: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/aeternals/hp-too-many-war-wounds/

Teddy knows, deep down inside, that he’s really fucked things up this time. Like, properly.

“Anyway,” he says to the room at large, sounding unconvinced even to his own ears, “It wasn’t _completely_ my fault.”

Across the table from him, Harry gives this little sigh and pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. They’ve been at this for so long. Even Dominique, who _loves_ watching other people—and especially Teddy—get dressed down, looks bored. She’s started rummaging through the drawer beside her, idly picking up various utensils and then dropping them while everybody else tries not to wince at the crash of metalware.

Teddy splays his hands helplessly on the table. “I mean, how was I to know? I didn’t, like, realise they were that closely related, or that they would be ballsy enough to make a play for it. Nan said I should have known better, since they’re _purebloods_ , but I thought was stereotyping and frankly rude. And, anyway, I feel like they _sort of_ have the right?”

Ginny sucks in a cross breath from behind Harry, and Dominique pauses with a spatula in one hand and an expression of utter delight on her face. Teddy hunches his shoulders in the chair. He’s twenty four years old, damnit, and he will not be bullied by a room full of Weasleys.

“I’m just saying,” he continues in what is supposed to be a firm voice but that comes out sort of strangled, mostly because Ginny has started to slowly and threateningly lower herself into a chair, “I know Sirius left you Grimmauld Place, Uncle Harry, but—I mean, you don’t even use it, you know? And you’ve not got Black blood. Not that that’s a bad thing, obviously. In fact it’s a good thing, because James and Al and Lily with Black blood would _probably_ be even scarier than they are now. In a good way,” he adds so quickly he nearly falls over the words, because Ginny’s and Harry’s brows have drawn down and Victoire has kicked him quite sharply in the side of the leg, which hurts a _lot_ , “But I mean the Blacks have handed that down for, like, _generations_. So it was kind of a dick move for Sirius to give it to you?”

There are _too many people_ in this kitchen. It would be bad enough with just Ginny and Harry, but to have members of practically every branch of Weasleys seems overkill. Like Teddy _said_ , it wasn’t even his _fault_. And, anyway, what investment does Angelina have? She’s not even _married_ to a Weasley anymore. No reason at all for her to be sat in the corner giving him the fish-eye.

Feeling very ganged up on, Teddy turns his hair a sorrowful shade of midnight blue, and grows his eyes so he can cast one of those huge puppy-dog looks up from beneath his lashes at his godfather.

“Stop it,” says Harry, frowning, “C’mon, Teddy, that’s not fair—”

Dominique throws her spatula back into the drawer with a crash. Momentarily distracted, all eyes in the room fly to her. She pushes one hand through her sleek hair and gives them all a great shrug. Next to Teddy, Victoire makes this little French _tch_ noise, like she knew the whole time her sister wouldn’t be able to resist getting involved.

“Okay, if you’d had something in your family since, like, the _dawn of time_ , you’d be pissed off if somebody gave it away, wouldn’t you? Especially if that person got kicked out of the family yonks ago. And Teddy’s Nan clearly doesn’t want it, so, like, the Malfoys are the next in line, right?”

“You can’t just arbitrarily _challenge_ the laws of inheritance, young lady,” Ginny retorts. Dominique raises one cool red brow. Teddy feels a little bit in love with her for a second. She’s the only person he knows who can stand up to the adults in her family without ending up backing down.

“Um,” she says, leaning back against the Potter’s kitchen counter, “I mean, if you’ve got the money, you can. And we’ve heard enough times about how the Malfoys definitely do.”

Beside Dominique, Young Molly has started nodding. “Yeah! Dad’s, like, _always_ moaning about it. They’ve got, like, offshore accounts, or something?”

“Precisely, Young Moll,” replies Dominique with a sage inclination of her head. Together they stand and stare at the rest of the room, Dominique full of frowns and Molly hopeful as a puppy.

“So your argument is that just because they can, they should?” inquires Hermione icily from her place next to Harry.

Dominique and Young Molly exchange a look, and then offer up a shrug each. Dominique’s is grand and French and careless; Young Molly’s is small and sort of helpless.

“Like,” the latter begins, prompting a quiet hiss of despair to emanate from Hermione, “not that they _should_. But they did? And, like, yelling at Teddy isn’t going to change that.”

“Well,” replies Harry, turning back around to fix his godson with a _spectacular_ stink-eye, “if _Teddy_ hadn’t decided to get drunk with a sixteen-year-old boy—”

“Um, _he_ decided to get drunk with _me_ ,” interrupts Teddy, but everybody ignores him.

“And if Teddy hadn’t asked said sixteen-year-old boy—sixteen-year-old _Malfoy_ boy—why Sirius had been given Grimmauld Place at all, when his parents specifically wrote their wills to state that their estate would pass to the next Black relative that wasn’t him, then _maybe_ that Malfoy boy wouldn’t have gone to ask his father the exact same thing, and we wouldn’t need to yell at _anybody_.”

“He’s probably only doing it to annoy you,” points out Young Molly, which is such an unusually astute thing for her to say that everybody swings around to stare at her again. Slightly taken aback, she continues, “You were like _enemies_ at school or whatever? And I know you say you’re all made up now, but really. I mean, _I’ve_ finished school, and I still want to kill Gemma Barlowe.”

“Yeah, but Gemma Barlowe’s a _bitch_ ,” points out Victoire and Dominique’s father from where he’s lounging in the doorway. Young Molly lets out a startled huff of laughter, and various adults in the room adopt pained expressions. Not looking it, Bill says, “Sorry. I know, I know, kids present.”

“I’m not a _kid_ ,” protests Freddie, the youngest in the room, “Merlin, I’m eighteen now, I’m only a year below Young Molly.”

“Yeah, alright, pipe down, ickle baby,” Dominique tells him with a wicked smirk. He turns to her with a murderous expression, but before he can snipe back Victoire raps her knuckles sharply on the rustic wooden table in the middle of the room.

“I think we’re losing focus,” she announces, fixing her younger sister with a pointed glare, “this was supposed to be a family meeting to discuss what to do about Grimmauld Place. Not to put Teddy on trial.”

Teddy turns his hair an ardent shade of pink and shoots her an enormous beam. She pretends to ignore it, but he knows she’s seen it. They went out for ages, after all. Doesn’t matter if it was years ago, he still knows her like the back of his hand.

Ginny’s wavering. “You should still apologise,” she says to Teddy at last, but she says it without her earlier heat.

Teddy sits up straighter, puts on a serious expression and tells the room at large, “I’m very sorry I fell for Scorpius’ tricks, got drunk, and gave the Malfoys the idea to sue for ownership of 12 Grimmauld Place.”

“Thank you for your apology,” replies Harry. “Now, we need to decide what to do.”

It takes Teddy another ten minutes to escape, and he ends up bent over in the front garden with his hands on his knees taking fortifying gulps of the cold fresh air. Someone saunters up behind him and slaps him hard enough on the arse for it to bring tears to his eyes.

“Alright, Lupin?” inquires Dominique in a slow drawl. Young Molly is trailing behind her, concentrating hard on rolling a spliff, ginger brows furrowed.

“I’ll be alright if you’ve got weed you’ll share with me,” he tells Dom with his most desperate expression. She laughs, grabbing at Young Molly’s sleeve and pulling her wand out.

“See you at mine, motherfucker,” she tells him, not waiting to hear his frankly hilarious, “I’d fuck _your_ mother,” comeback before she’s apparating them both away. Teddy gives them a minute or two before following—Young Molly often gets sick from side-along apparition, and he’s so not in the mood to Vanish vomit right now.

Just as he’s preparing to leave, Victoire comes racing out the front door. She’s wrapping an enormous scarf around her neck. Or her head, really, it’s that big. Teddy watches it with an expression caught between horror and confusion.

“It’s just a fucking _scarf_ , Teddy,” she tells him in exasperation, “Are you going back to London? I’ve got Kenjutsu, but we could hang out this evening.”

Despite the fact that it stopped being funny when she was ten, Teddy gives a great theatrical shudder at the thought of Victoire doing martial arts with a sword and says, “Don’t behead yourself.”

“Haha, you’re comedy gold,” she tells him blankly, and then presses, “So, you up for it?”

“I think I’m going to Dom’s, actually,” he replies, “She and Young Moll said something about a party this evening, thought I’d drop in. Show my face and all that.”

“Just don’t go as Uncle Harry again,” Victoire warns, pulling her wand out, “I mean, it was _hilarious_ , but with this whole court case I don’t think he needs pictures of himself falling out of an Edinburgh club at three AM with some twenty-year-old brunette.”

“She was twenty-two,” Teddy protests, but he’s grinning. Harry had given him a stern talking-to about it afterwards, deaf to Teddy’s protests that it was the only way to skip the line and, besides, it was barely five minutes in total, he’d spent most of the evening pretending to be various members of Lumos, the current it-band. (“I’m just a _guy_ , I have to get _laid_ ,” he’d explained with a dramatic wail, which had prompted a lecture about maturity instead of the hoped-for sympathy.)

“Be good,” Victoire tells him as her wand begins to slash through the air.

“I’m always good,” Teddy lies to the place where she used to be, and then apparates away himself.

* * *

 

They don’t make it to the party until gone midnight, and end up leaving Young Molly on the sofa in Dom’s flat. Teddy tucks a blanket over her before they leave. Her head is askew on one of Dom’s ratty old pillows, her red curls like a lion’s mane around her face, and her long legs dangle over the end of the couch. She’d look the picture of innocence were it not for the smell of weed, the empty bottles of beer on the floor next to her, and the fact that her shirt’s got caught around a boob and left one side of her bra fully exposed.

It takes Teddy longer than he’s proud of to realise that he’s not going to be able to get the tiny blanket to cover the entirety of her body, tall as she is, and then longer still to hunt for a second blanket.

“Fucking leave her,” grouses Dominique from the doorway, trying to wriggle her feet into her thigh-high boots. “She’ll be fine. Her feet aren’t going to freeze off.”

Teddy gives in. He’s desperate to get to the party, and besides Dom’s probably right.

“I feel kind of bad about it,” Teddy confesses a short while later as they turn the corner out of her street. Dominique, clutching tightly to his arm and slipping about on the icy pavement in her heels, just tells him to fuck off.

“I’m serious,” he presses, looking mournful, “She was so looking forward to the party. You shouldn’t have let her smoke so much.”

“She’s a big girl,” Dominique retorts, concentrating too hard on where her feet are going to be able to glare at him, “Also, she looks forward to, like, _everything_. She’s so easily pleased.”

“What a relief that gene skipped you,” Teddy mocks.

Dominique, dead serious, concurs, “I know, right?”

By the time they make it to the party Dominique has nearly broken her ankle twice and gone arse-over-tits once, because Teddy made her walk on her own for calling him a “chameleon circuit, only you pretend to be the stupidest thing in the room instead of the most subtle”. Teddy’s not precisely sure what a chameleon circuit is, because he’s not a _loser_ who watches Muggle sci-fi shows, but he’d been able to guess at the general rudeness of the sentence thanks to the middle finger she flipped him while she was saying it.

The party, contrary to what Young Molly had assured them earlier in the afternoon, is not a “fucking banger”, and the only real source of excitement outside the copious levels of alcohol is a rowdy group of girls in one corner doing purple shots out of little glasses shaped like goblins.

“How _offensive_ ,” Dominique says sniffily, and swans off to find the most attractive woman in the room to flirt with. Teddy, not being the wimp that she insists he is, shucks his coat and heads straight for the girls doing shots.

Anticipating a fun night of drinking, flirting, and ideally _scoring_ , he’s unimpressed three shots in to realise that he knows the girl who’s just barged into the group to pour something green out of a bottle and straight into her friend’s mouth.

“How the _fuck_ did you get out of Hogwarts?” he demands of her, having to grab a fistful of her frankly ridiculously long hair in order to get her attention. Lily Potter, who is drunk and in _Edinburgh_ and also, quite importantly, _fourteen years old,_ swears at him with such spite even Dominique might be impressed.

“James texted me,” she informs him, leaning into his personal space and then back out of it without realising, “Said you and Dom and Young Molly were coming to a party here, and I said I’d persuade Maddie to get off with him if he got me here, and, like, Maddie’s _hot_ , so here I am.”

“You’re _fourteen_ ,” says Teddy crossly. One of her friends starts laughing helplessly and trying to unpick Teddy’s hands from Lily’s hair. She’s so drunk she keeps missing and pitching forwards in her chair. Teddy, not too gently, pulls on the hair so that Lily turns to look at her friend. He demands, “Is _this_ Maddie?”

“Jesus, Teddy,” Lily exclaims, looking outraged, “You think I’d pimp out my actual friends to my brother? We’re _fourteen_ , you arsehole.”

“I _know_ ,” pleads Teddy, feeling like this conversation is getting away from him, “That’s what I _said_.”

“Relax,” Lily says, leaning in to pat his cheek reassuringly, having to prop herself up on his shoulder with her other hand to stay standing. Teddy lets her hair go and swears at her. She swears back, then abruptly grabs her drunk friend and stumbles off. Teddy, out of sheer unwillingness to be responsible, lets her go.

“Make good choices!” Dominique yells after her, appearing to collapse onto the sofa next to Teddy. She sprawls into him, pressing a drink on him before he has to ask.

“Were _we_ like that at fourteen?” Teddy inquires of her helplessly. Dominique cocks her head to one side. Her hair falls over her face, shiny and sleek in the low light.

“I mean, I think _I_ was,” she replies thoughtfully, “You probably weren’t, because you were a goody-two-shoes until Vic got to you—”

“I was _not_ a goody-two-shoes,” Teddy interrupts self-importantly.

“Edward,” she says, with infinite patience, “You were in _Hufflepuff_. You were _Head Boy_.”

“Lucy’s in Hufflepuff, and she’s one of the worst-behaved people I know.”

“Head Boy,” Dominique repeats, twirling a finger in his face.

“Harry said they’ve written him just to let him know they think Al might be a good candidate for Head Boy next year.”

Dominique chokes on her drink. When she’s caught her breath, she says, “Fuck _me_ ,” very weakly.  Teddy can’t think of any way to expand on that sentiment, so they both sit in silent mutual horror at the thought of Albus Potter as Head Boy for a few moments.

Finally Teddy says, “Shotgun not taking her back to Hogwarts later.”

Dominique just laughs.

* * *

At six AM, Teddy delivers Lily and four of her friends to the headmistress of Hogwarts with a very smug air. He feels like there might have been a sixth one, but he isn’t sure enough to waste time traipsing around Edinburgh to look for her.

“I’m going to kill you,” Lily moans from beside him, having to lean into him to stay standing, “You promised to take us back to Slytherin. I’ll kill you. I’m going to tie you up, then I’m going to peel your skin off a centimetre at a time, until you’re _begging—_ ”

“Alright, alright,” Teddy cuts in, yanking the last fourteen-year-old into the spiral staircase that leads to the headmistress’ office and forcibly turning one of them away from him as she’s sick.

“Professor Macmillan,” he announces as he herds the five of them in, not even pretending not to be pleased with himself, “I’m sorry to report I found these girls at a party in Edinburgh last night. I’ve not the faintest idea how they got there, but I thought it best to deliver them back to you.”

There’s a thoughtful silence from the headmistress’ side of the room. Patiently, Teddy waits for the praise to come.

“Last night, you say?” inquires Macmillan, leaning forward and propping her elbows up on the desk. For a woman who was woken by a rather chaotic five AM floo call from a twenty-four-year-old she never even _taught_ , she looks remarkably put-together. Teddy nods in his most serious and grandiose fashion, and catches the Rosier girl by her black net collar as she makes to wander off.

“Is there any particular reason it’s taken until six o’ clock to return them to school, then?” the headmistress asks in the deadly quiet tone that Teddy supposes strikes fear into the heart of pupil and staff alike. Since she’s only been in charge for a year, Teddy has never learnt to be afraid of this tone being directed at him, and is rather good at ignoring icy voices besides.

Some good things come of growing up alongside Weasleys.

“I didn’t want to wake you up in the middle of the night,” he replies caringly, “So I took them for food before we came back.”

“And how did you get back?”

“I’ve a friend in Hogsmeade,” he informs her with a grin, “So we flooed. This one,” he adds, releasing the Rosier girl in order to push forward one with alarmingly purple hair, “was sick three times.”

Purple hair—Parkinson, he thinks—gives her headmistress a grin that looks more proud than sorry. A very soft sigh drifts over from Professor Macmillan.

“Alright, thank you, Mr Lupin,” she tells him, sounding suspiciously like she’s had to do this before, “I’ll send for their housemaster and see to their punishments. If you could pass this misdemeanour along to Miss Potter’s parents, I’d be much obliged.”

Teddy salutes her and then turns to march out the door. He pauses to look over his shoulder. Parkinson has bent over to be sick again, and Lily has her head twisted to watch him leave. When she meets his eyes, she gives him a smile with far too many teeth. Teddy tips her a lazy wink and then makes his escape.

He goes back to Edinburgh rather than his place in London, determined that if _he’s_ up at six AM, Dominique will also be up at six AM.

“Don’t you have any fucking friends your own age,” she demands when she opens the door to him. She's wearing nothing but lace knickers and a t-shirt he's pretty sure she got when she was fifteen, which declares "girl power" in an obnoxious black cursive right across her boobs. She also has make-up smudged under her eyes, two new hickeys on her neck, someone else's lipstick on her jawline, and hair sticking up in very unusual directions.

“Well, you clearly behaved yourself,” he tells her, sweeping past her and into the messy sitting room, “Did you have fun last night?”

Young Molly rolls over on the sofa and says, “She did. You should see the girl she’s got in her room.”

“I’ll pass, thank you,” he replies, toeing off his shoes and heading for Young Molly.

“What are you doing?” Dominique demands as he drops his coat on the coffee table and then clambers over Young Molly, squirrelling himself down on his side onto the sofa behind her. She makes a happy noise and pulls his arms around her so they’re spooning, which makes them adorable as _all fuck_ in Teddy’s humble opinion.

“I’m _sleeping_ ,” he replies as though it should be obvious, “Like fuck am I getting in the bed when you’ve been having sex in it all night.”

Dominique looks murderous enough to throw them both out, but Teddy’s practically asleep already anyway.

“Edward,” she tells him, leaning in above them both to really up the threatening factor, “It is high time you got yourself either a girlfriend or some _actual_ friends.”

“Like, we’re his friends, though?” offers Young Molly hopefully, reaching one hand out to ping the elastic of her cousin's pants against her hip.

“I’ve got friends,” lies Teddy tiredly, mumbling into the back of Molly’s head, “Now fuck off and let us sleep.”

“You’re going to die alone,” says Dominique.

“So long as you’re not there.”

* * *

He wakes at seven in the evening with a raging hangover and, somewhat embarrassingly, a hard-on.

“I knew you loved me,” says Young Molly sleepily from in front of him. Because she’s not Dominique and therefore doesn’t automatically deserve spite, Teddy kisses the back of her head before he pushes her off the sofa. She lands with a thump and a yowl but she’s laughing by the time she sits up, pushing her haphazard curls off her face.

Forty minutes later they’ve both showered, Teddy has taken care of his _problem_ , they’ve found clothes that haven’t seen two days’ wear, and Dominique has failed to appear from her bedroom.

Teddy makes the executive decision to go and find food without her.

“I think she’ll be mad?” suggests Young Molly as they wend their way down the rickety staircase that leads from Dominique’s top-floor flat.

“She should have got the fuck out of bed, then,” Teddy replies through a yawn, holding the door open for her. She floats by him with a serious expression, tendrils of hair already starting to escape from the plait she pulled her hair into before they left the flat. The wispy bits are drying fast, corkscrewing back into her usual curls. The rest of it, on the other hand, is still dark red with water, several shades removed from its usual fire. Having received several lectures from his grandmother about chivalry and whatnot, Teddy gallantly grabs her in a headlock to force his hat over her head, nearly sending them both sprawling down the steps outside.

“Um,” she says when he releases her, already going to pull the hat off.

“Your hair is still wet,” Teddy tells her authoritatively, clamping both of his hands onto her head to prevent her from removing it, “it’s November. You could _die_.”

She scrumples her nose up at him, a frown drawing her brows down. Eventually she offers an uncertain, “…thank you?” and then sets off down the garden path.

They end up in some overpriced hipster saloon, munching through burgers and trying to decide if their stomachs are feeling strong enough to go for the hair of the dog and order beers with their meals. Feeling the burger churning uneasily in his stomach, Teddy decides to focus his attention elsewhere.

“Young Moll,” he says, distracting her from her thoughtful perusal of her sweet potato fries, “Were you a hell-raiser at fourteen?”

She considers this for a second, bending a chip between her long freckled fingers.

“Um, I don’t _think_ so?” she offers eventually, stuffing the chip into her mouth, “I mean, like, Dominique got me drunk a few times. But I didn’t do parties or anything until sixth year.”

“That’s what I thought!” Teddy exclaims dramatically, desperately glad to be proven right, “Lily’s just out of control, right? That’s what—”

“I did have sex with Alistair when I was fourteen, though,” she adds absently, reaching for another chip, “the one I told you about?”

Teddy racks his brains. Young Molly doesn’t go through boys with the same voracity that her cousin goes through girls, but he gets her conquests all mixed up in his head with various other Weasleys’, and it usually takes him a while to sort through.

“Wait,” he says suddenly, “The Alistair who was _Dom's dad's friend_ Alistair? _That_ was when you were fourteen?”

She nods with a grin, reaching for her water glass.  “He was excellent. He said I was, like, the _light_ of his _life_.”

Teddy, who was still dating Victoire when she went through her Nabokov phase, feels a shudder travel right from the top of his head to the tips of his toes.

“Molly,” he says. She looks up, alarmed to be addressed just by her given name and not the pet name she’s been called since literally before she could talk. Teddy is way, way too hungover to be doing this. He says, “I mean—you do realise that’s, like, _rape_?”

She shrugs, tearing off a bit of burger bun to stuff into her mouth.

“Dom explained that all to me right after,” she informs him, mouth full, “And then she hexed him, like, _really_ badly. I think he had to have, like, a _ball_ removed. But that was kind of nasty of her, because it was my fault anyway.”

“You were a _kid_ ,” Teddy says firmly. He wants to cover her hand with his or something equally sympathetic, but hers have got ketchup all over them.

“Yeah, but I snuck into his room at, like, three in the morning in just my underwear and went straight for his dick,” Molly explains, finishing her water and reaching for his, “I mean, what would you do if someone did that?”

Teddy’s mind strays to Lily’s friends the night before, with their swathes of bare skin and tiny scraps of clothing, and he’s very relieved to find that all his conscience is saying is “ _fuck no_ ”.

“I’d kick them the fuck out,” he replies, very relieved to be saying it honestly. Molly grins, ketchup smeared across one of her front teeth and her hair escaping like a mad thing from under his hat.

“That’s because you’re, like, _honourable_.”

Teddy makes a face at her, and she goes off into peals of laughter.

“Eat your fucking burger,” he tells her grouchily, pushing her plate closer to her. She swipes up another chip, still chuckling, and shoves it merrily into her mouth.

The topic doesn’t come up again until they’re wandering home at ten, the moon a bright and serious companion, her arm twined past his and her hand in his coat pocket.

“He was, like, the best sex I’ve ever had? Alistair, I mean. Much better than Colin Hills, who was, like, _age-appropriate._ He went down on me _three times_ and didn’t make me do it back _once_.”

“The true modern gentlemen,” Teddy mocks. Molly chuckles and tucks her hand deeper. Glancing sidelong at her, Teddy is very relieved that she’s got Dominique watching out for her. It saves him all the trouble of hunting down that Alistair fellow and destroying him himself.

That being said, he's not sure he won't track him down and get him arrested at some point.

When they arrive back at the flat, Dominique is in a tearing fury at being left behind. Teddy knows it’s a doozy of a tantrum because her hair—usually a neat, sharp red bob—is a frazzled frizzy mess, tangling around her raging white face and ferocious blue eyes.

“Oh, man,” says Young Molly apprehensively, which is about all she’s got time to say before Dominique powers across the room and gets right in their faces to yell at them. Since Molly has got the spidery long legs of a Victoria’s Secret model and a good seven inches on Dominique’s five foot three, and Teddy definitely isn’t above giving himself an extra couple of inches to get his head out of her immediate line of fire, to be this close to their faces is quite a feat.

She reels off a whole stream of expletives, mixed in with disparaging remarks about their appearances, attitudes, and feelings towards each other, and rounds it all off by calling Young Molly an angel-faced fucknugget and Teddy a “total and complete cunt”.

Once she has stopped shouting, and sparks have stopped fizzing out of her fingers—which, hey, means she’s getting closer to actually being able to do the wandless magic she’s been bragging about for years—Young Molly tentatively pulls their peace offering out from behind her back.

“Anyway, we brought you a burger?” she offers hopefully, presenting it to her cousin with a smile. “It’s the venison one you love.”

By the time Dominique has sworn at them a couple more times and munched her way mutinously through the burger, she’s almost completely calm and ready to engage in conversation like a civilised human being.

“Like, no offence,” Teddy tells her from where he is lounging beside her on the sofa watching _Dance Moms_ , “but I think you have some severe abandonment issues.”

“Fuck you,” says Dominique, stealing the remote to switch over to _Project Runway_.

She’s kicked her one-night-stand out, so by midnight the three of them are all tucked up in her bed together. Dominique, for reasons bemusing to Teddy, can’t fall asleep unless she’s on her front, so she’s starfished out with one arm draped across Teddy’s chest and her left leg hooked between both of Young Molly’s.

“Hey,” Teddy says into the dim room. Dominique makes a sleepy sound of curiosity, and Young Molly turns her head to regard Teddy. There’s a yellow-orange streetlamp outside and Dominique is too skint to buy curtains, so the glow washes them all in a subtle sunset hue.

“What?” Dominique mumbles eventually, pressing her nose hard enough into her cousin’s upper arm to make Young Molly grumble quietly at her.

“Do you think it’s our fault? Lily, I mean. With her, like, _wild child_ thing.”

“Why the fuck would that be our fault?”

“Well, we don’t exactly set a good example, you know? We all drink too much, and we do drugs quite a bit, and we never try to hide that around any of the younger lot.”

“Ted,” Dominique admonishes in muffled tones, lifting the hand on his chest to press it over his face, “chill out. We could be angels and she’d still have those brothers.”

“Yeah,” Teddy replies earnestly, “But don’t you think maybe _they’re_ our fault too?”

 “I think, like,” Young Molly pipes up, to Teddy’s surprise, “They’d probably be like this anyway? They’ve never had, you know, _privacy_. With the media and everything. ‘Cause of Aunt Ginny and Uncle Harry. I don’t think that’s our fault. I think it’s good they’ve got us, actually, you know? Like, if we weren’t like this, probably the stuff they do would look _way_ worse by comparison.”

“Besides, we’re in our fucking twenties,” concurs Dominique, and adds, “or practically, anyway,” when Young Molly murmurs a protest from beside her. “This is all perfectly regular behaviour.” She removes her hand from Teddy’s face and hooks her arm around his neck. Having forcibly dragged him closer, right into the crook of her shoulder, she says, “now shut up and go to sleep.”

Pinned there, Teddy doesn’t have much choice.


	2. Chapter Two

To prove that he does have real, actual friends, thanks so much, Teddy goes back to London in the morning and drops in on Ben Cullen. Ben looks pretty surprised to see him, but they go for a beer anyway and exchange details about their lives. Like _friends_ do. 

Ben is looking really fucking shifty for so long that Teddy eventually stops texting Dominique the poo emoji to bug her at work and just asks.

“Alright, what?”

Ben mumbles something at his lap, and then he fixes Teddy with an alarmingly worried stare and says, “Look, mate, I’m really sorry, but I sort of—slept with Victoire? Your ex?”

Teddy considers being hurt by this, but nobody is around who’d get a kick out of it. Also Ben is, like, one of only _three_ of Teddy’s friends who aren’t Weasleys, so.

“We broke up before she even finished school, Cullen,” he reminds him, glancing at his phone as it buzzes with a new snapchat, “Honestly, so long as you both are happy, do whatever, you know?”

“We’re not _dating_ ,” Ben hastens to clarify, “It was a one-time thing, really.”

“That’s a shame,” Teddy tells him absently, unlocking his phone to get at Young Molly’s snapchat, “she could do with somebody good in her life. She’s not had anyone since that wanker who kept trying to get off with her sister. Which is weird, actually. You'd think she’d have guys dangling off her left right and centre.”

 The snapchat turns out to be Young Molly with a puppy. It’s hard to say which of the two looks more excited. Grinning, Teddy looks up from his phone. Ben is watching him with this narrow stare, brown eyes suspicious. Honestly, it’s no wonder Victoire went for him. He’s got the best bone structure of any boy Teddy knows, and his skin is dark and smooth as a three AM dream. Frankly, Teddy’s surprised it took her this long.

“Seriously, man, it’s fine,” Teddy reassures him, “it’s been years, and she’s my friend. It would be incredibly uncool of me to get weird about it.”

Ben visibly relaxes, long limbs sprawling out. He brushes a hand across his shorn-short hair and inquires of Teddy, “want to come to a party tonight? Loads of the old crowd will be there.”

It takes Teddy precisely four seconds to surf through his other options—go back to Scotland to bug Dominique and Young Molly, attack the pile of job application forms gathering dust on his desk, or visit his grandmother—and eagerly latch onto the offer.

“Sure,” he replies casually, “though it had better not be the same shit club as last time.”

Come eleven PM he’s discovered that it is, in fact, the same shit club as last time, and tonight the people in it are generally an even odder bunch than before. The ones that look overage, that is. There’s some girls that look almost as young as Lily’s crowd.

In fact—Teddy’s eyes narrow across the dance floor—that one is _definitely_ as young as Lily’s crowd.

Aggrieved, he purposefully takes the time to finish his drink before waving a general ‘I’ll be back’ gesture at Ben and Victoire, who are ensconced against the bar together. They barely notice him go. Ben is winding the ends of Victoire's long red hair around one finger and she's watching him do it with this quiet, pleased expression. They're both so attractive it could be a scene out of a Hollywood movie, which would piss Teddy off more if he didn't have other fish to fry.

He forges purposefully through the bumping, heated mess of dancers and collars a slim, sweaty redhead from near the DJ, giving the guy who had moved in to grind up against her such a filthy look there's not a word of protest on that front.

“How the _fuck_ ,” he demands of her, yanking her along with him as he fights his way back out through the crowd.

She starts swearing at him, spitting like a cat, but Teddy has shoulders broad as a beater and is pushing six foot three even without his metamorphagus abilities, so it achieves absolutely nothing.

“You are such a _wanker_ ,” Lily gasps when he finally has her hauled out onto the street, yanking her jacket out from under his hands. A bouncer steps forward looking a little concerned, but Lily waves at him and explains, “My cousin,” which sends him back to his post.

“Aren’t you on, like, lockdown?” Teddy inquires, genuinely curious, “How did you _get here_?”

“I’ve had the Marauders’ Map since first year,” she informs him tersely, starting to unwind her long, long hair from its bun, “Won it off Al in a bet. And James gave me the invisibility cloak when he left. Honestly, sneaking out is one of the _easiest_ —”

“How did you get to the _other end of the country_?” Teddy cuts in, hissing the question out from between gritted teeth. Honestly, Ginny and Harry probably thought it was so _cute_ , to saddle him with the responsibility of being a pseudo-older brother to Lily as a kid, but signing up to occasionally babysit a four year old was not supposed to lead to _this_ kind of bullshit.

Lily heaves a great, careless shrug.

The kid, Teddy deduces, has been paying far too much attention to Dominique’s mannerisms.

“Clary Rosier’s sister’s seeing a guy who lives in Hogsmeade,” she explains, starting to gather up the hair she’s just loosed from a bun into a ponytail, “She gave me a lift when she came back, then I just got the tube.”

She drops her hair to produce an oyster card from somewhere within the depths of her bra, much to Teddy’s horror. She looks so _pleased_ with herself.

Teddy feels the onset of a dilemma. On the one hand, if he were Lily, he’d just want to be left to get on with it. Live life, make mistakes, all that. On the other hand, she’s _fourteen_ , and he might be an unemployed, feckless, and irresponsible layabout but he’s also known her since she was born and can’t just abandon her to the perils of a situation she doesn’t understand how to navigate. Especially after learning what he learnt about Young Molly, and how easy it is for kids to end up in over their heads.

“Lily,” he says to her, catching at her wrist, “This is insane. You’re _fourteen_. This is completely a dick move, and I’m sorry in advance about it, but—”

He starts to pull her away from the club, ignoring her protests, and only waits as long as it takes to find a secluded alley before he pulls his wand out and apparates them both away. When Lily realises that he’s brought her to her parents’ front door, she kicks him so hard in the shin that it takes him a minute to gulp the tears back down.

He manages to pin her against him securely enough—despite her vicious wriggling and swearing—to ring the doorbell.

“Since when did you have the _right_ to be so fucking _parental_ ,” she spits from where she’s trapped. Her hair is a staticky, fiery mess and it’s all tangled up around his forearms, which must hurt a hell of a lot. To her credit, none of the fight goes out of her.

It’s not until the door creaks open and Harry and Ginny appear, sleep-ruffled and with their wands out, that Lily finally gives up the ghost.

“Merlin,” she says with a great sigh, “Ted, I’ll never forgive you.”

It takes Teddy about five minutes to explain the situation to his godfather, including an extra minute to apologise profusely for not telling him about the Edinburgh fiasco sooner. As he does so, Ginny pulls her recalcitrant daughter into the house and up the stairs. When the shouting starts, Harry carefully casts a Silencing charm to avoid waking the neighbours.

“Honestly,” Harry admits, looking fraught and tired behind the glow of his wand, “I’m really grateful. You kids have always closed ranks so quickly—I appreciate you bringing her here instead of trying to keep it quiet. I appreciate it a lot.”

He claps Teddy on the shoulder once and squeezes. Teddy, who has clearly had too much to drink and too little sleep the last few days, feels dangerously close to tears.

It doesn’t matter how much he tries to cut it out, there’s still a part of himself that would throw itself to wolves for Harry’s paternal approval. It was not like he ever lacked it, exactly, just that Harry had never really had a clue what to do with him—too young to be a proper father and too old to be a friend—and then Harry's own kids had come along, and Teddy's status had been eternally fixed as secondary. Not that he doesn't _understand_ , or whatever. But, still, Harry's good opinion matters far more than he'd care to admit.

“Yeah, well, I’m worried about her,” he says sincerely, which is definitely a step up from crying, though not up there with nonchalant humour, which is what he'd achieve in an ideal world. “I mean, you know, James did the whole off-the-rails thing and I didn’t help even though I could’ve, so. This is, like, penance, I guess?”

Harry nods seriously and lets his shoulder go. “You want to stay? I can make up the spare room.”

“Nah, thanks,” Teddy says, “I’ll just go home. Early start tomorrow and all that. You back with the lawyers tomorrow?”

Harry passes a hand over his face in exhaustion and replies, “Yeah. Honestly, I don’t know what’s worse—wasting so much time when I should be at work, or Malfoy’s smug bloody expression from across the table. There's no way he's willing to settle. He _wants_ this dragged through the courts. You know,” he adds suddenly, a tiny grin lifting up one side of his mouth, “For years after the war, I really thought he’d had all that pummelled out of him? I mean, you’d think, right? But, _Merlin_ , it’s like he never suffered at all.”

Teddy laughs and informs his godfather, “Young Molly is of the erstwhile opinion that it’s getting away with keeping his money and his house. Thinks it’s restored his confidence. That and, you know, the ‘healing power of time.’”

“Smart kid,” says Harry without a trace of irony. Teddy narrows his eyes as his godfather asks, tone deceptively light, “Still seeing a lot of Young Molly and Dominique, then, are you?”

“Um,” he replies, “Yeah, I guess? I know they’re not exactly my age group, but they’re hilarious. It’s still a bit awkward hanging out with Victoire, you know, and I lost touch with most people after Hogwarts. They all got _jobs_ and lives and stuff. Way too intense for me.”

Teddy is ninety-nine percent certain that it’s only the late hour and problem of Lily that saves him from the “you really should get a job I think your parents would want that” talk. Instead of limbering up for the lecture, Harry just stifles a yawn behind his hand.

“Fair enough,” he says, “See you soon, then. You’ll come round for dinner next week? Maybe after Lily’s been shipped back to school. I’m a bit worried she’ll avada kedavra you if you show your face before that.”

“Me too,” Teddy tells him sincerely. “Night. G’luck tomorrow.”

Harry waves him off. Teddy barely gets to the end of the garden path before he gets too tired to continue walking and decides to just apparate straight out. He ends up outside the front door to his flat, fumbles his way inside, and only takes the time to send a quick text to Victoire saying he took Lily home before collapsing onto his bed fully-clothed and passing out.

* * *

It takes two weeks for the Lily thing to come back and bite Teddy in the arse, which is considerably more time than he thought it would. He comes home after a day spent sketching swans in Regent’s Park to find his front door ajar and his apartment full of cigarette smoke. Cleaning the air with a simple charm, because he is not some sort of city-dwelling _dragon_ , he is entirely unsurprised to find James Potter sprawled out across his sofa.

“Sick outfit,” says Teddy with the precise tone of sincerity that will let James know he’s talking shit. James, replete in a white wifebeater, low-slung jeans and an honest-to-god _snapback_ , flips him off in silence.

Teddy piles his art supplies up onto his already-overloaded dining table and throws himself into his armchair. James pulls himself slightly more upright and lights another fag.

“I presume you’re here to get back at me on Lily’s behalf?” Teddy inquires once James has taken a couple of puffs and blown smoke rings in his most seductive, mysterious manner at the ceiling. Teddy doesn’t comment on it. He’s told James more times than he can count that the whole mysterious thing only works if you don’t start endlessly talking about yourself the second you open your mouth.

“She told me to black your eye,” says James indolently, letting his head loll sideways to squint at his godbrother, “But I got in a fight yesterday, so my hand hurts too much. I’m giving you a stern talking-to instead.”

“Is that what this is?”

James flicks ash onto Teddy’s favourite rug. There’s a new tattoo crawling up his shoulder from under his vest. Teddy can’t make much out from here apart from barbs and teeth, which probably means it’s a very _James_ tattoo.

“She knows what she’s doing,” James informs him calmly, turning his gaze back to the ceiling, “let her be.”

“I’m going to respectfully disagree,” Teddy tells him. James grins, just a little, his teeth bright white and his mouth too red.

“C’mon, Ted, you don’t do _anything_ respectfully. That’s why you’ve not got a job. Dad would have pulled any string you asked.”

“I don’t _want_ a job,” retorts Teddy petulantly, kicking his legs out, “And also your father has quite enough on his plate.”

“Yeah, this court case,” James replies, taking another long drag of his cigarette, “Word on the street is that’s, like, completely your fault.”

“Okay, like, less than _sixty percent_ ,” Teddy grumbles, “And calling it ‘the street’ doesn’t convince anybody you don’t chase family gossip like a bloodhound.”

James isn’t listening. He’s flexing his left hand—his punching hand—delicately, discomfort creeping across his face. As usual, his attention has wandered before the conversation is even close to over.

Teddy watches him pull his fingers in and wince a couple of times before he asks, “have you had that checked out?”

James glances across at him, hazel eyes bloodshot and narrowed, and snarls, “like fuck. It’s nothing.”

“I mean,” says Teddy, “no offence, but it looks like you put it through a meat grinder.”

“Well, McLaggen’s built like a brick wall, so that’s a massive fucking surprise.”

“Oh, James, you didn’t punch Faolan McLaggen?”

James adopts an expression of righteous indignation that for the briefest second makes him look like he used to when he was twelve and trying to get Albus in trouble, all wide eyes and floppy hair and gap-toothed innocence. Pushing his nose into the air he announces, “’Course I fucking did. First of all, he’s got a _stupid_ name, being Irish is no excuse for it, but also Asta says her mum got drunk and told her that his dad is totally copping off with Aunt Hermione. Asta’s mum is a filthy fucking liar and a shit-stirrer besides, because I checked, they went out like _one time_ in school and it was a disaster, according to Hugo, and Aunt Hermione would definitely never cheat on Uncle Ron and, like, if she did it would be with someone a hell of a lot better than _Faolan McLaggen’s dad_.

Teddy has seen Cormac McLaggen brooding on the sidelines of a couple of matches of Dominique's favourite sport, an immensely violent and brutal type of polo played on honest-to-God _kelpies_. He has also heard the wistful sighs of all the girls in his immediate vicinity any time the broad-shouldered, square-jawed McLaggen Sr wandered into their field of vision, and is therefore inclined to disagree with James’ assessment.

However, James is looking fierce, and Teddy really doesn’t a) want him doing his hand any more damage and b) fancy taking a punch to the nose, so he decides not to poke that particular wasps’ nest and instead makes a non-committal noise of interest to encourage his godbrother to continue.

“So anyway I made Asta fact check with her dad because he’s friends with McLaggen’s dad—god knows why, you know what pureblood parents are usually like about associating with the _rabble_ —and he just loves to stir shit—which is probably why her parents get along so well, actually—so he said it was true, which meant I had to go find McLaggen to sort it out, and he was _actually_ like a total bitch about it, as fucking usual, so I just punched him to get it over with. I was aiming for his nose but I missed and now my hand fucking _hurts_.”

Teddy squints at him. “I hate to be the one stating the obvious here—”

“Bullshit,” interrupts James without looking at him.

“—but you should definitely go to the hospital about that.”

With exaggerated care, James stubs his cigarette out on the arm of Teddy’s sofa and points out, “Then everyone will know I punched somebody, and McLaggen will sing like a bird the second he realises the media know. He’s _such_ an attention whore.”

Teddy examines James, the biggest attention whore he knows, sprawled out on the sofa, and tries not to roll his eyes. James is wearing a fucking _snapback_ and he still looks like he walked out of a fashion editorial, which would make Teddy envious if he didn’t know how long he spends every day cultivating his image.

He’s just reminding himself that he’s not duty-bound to spend the rest of his life babysitting wayward Potters and thus one hundred percent is _not_ about to fight James into going to the hospital when there’s an exclamation of horror from the vicinity of his front door, and less than two seconds later Dominique and Young Molly storm in with their wands whipped out in front of them.

“If you’re murdering Teddy we’ll _kill_ you!” shrieks Dominique as she skids to a halt, Young Molly nearly crashing into her. James and Teddy both turn to find the pair wearing expressions fast melting from fury to embarrassment.

“Oh,” says Molly, her cheeks flushing bright pink under her freckles. “You left the door open, the lock was broken, we—”

“I’m so touched,” Teddy tells them, extending an arm backwards to invite them to join, “I wasn’t sure you’d care enough to avenge my death.”

“Only because you still owe me a hundred galleons,” retorts Dominique, stuffing her wand back into her boot and sauntering right past Teddy to give James a pat on the snapback. Molly weasels her way into the armchair with Teddy while James rearranges himself on the sofa. He’s always been much more generous with Dominique than he is with any of his other cousins.

As Dominique calmly folds herself up on top of his legs, James says, “Did you hear this wanker totally sold Lily out?”

Young Molly laughs into her hand, and Dominique grins broadly.

“We did,” she confirms, not looking like she feels sorry for Lily much at all, “Such a _responsible_ young man, our Ted.”

Teddy shoots two fingers at her and stays silent.

“She’s still spitting,” James informs them, pulling one foot out from beneath Dominique to push at her thigh, “They’ve honest-to-god put a _tracking charm_ on her so they can be sure she’s in school. She’s fuming.”

“Is that legal?” Teddy wants to know. James gives him a big, heavy shrug.

“I mean, underage drinking is definitely _more_ not legal, so I think it kind of balances out?”

Teddy gives his godbrother a long, searching look. “James, I don’t think that’s really how the law works.”

“Fuck off,” says James, and readjusts his snapback.

Dominique gives him one very hard poke in the thigh and inquires, “Was Lily telling the truth when she said you gave her the lift to Edinburgh the other day?”

James makes a face and pushes at her again, scowling. Dominique adds, looking thrilled about it, “You totally just did it because she promised you sex, didn’t you?”

“She’s my _sister_ ,” James cries, looking more alarmed than Teddy thinks he’s seen him look maybe ever. Dominique just rolls her eyes at him.

“Not with _her_ , you _pervert_ ,” she clarifies, “With her mate. That seventh year that Hugo’s completely in love with. The Slytherin.”

James’ expression morphs from horror into total and utter smugness in under a second. He exchanges a look with Teddy that Teddy returns before he can stop himself, because—well, they’ve all seen Madeleine Avery. Even Teddy, who is six years out of Hogwarts, has seen Madeleine Avery. The girl’s a _legend_.

“I don’t like to brag,” says James, to cries of derision from the other three occupants of the room, “But I totally got in there.”

Young Molly makes a quiet noise of irritation right next to Teddy’s ear. Dominique is less reticent, and picks up a pillow with which to smack her cousin around the head.

“You’re such a fucking chauvinist,” she tells him. “And a cliché besides. I thought you were too cool to go for the _obvious_ girl.”

Teddy lets out a shout of laughter at the idea of James being _cool_. Certainly the press seem to think so, always commenting on it—they’ve totally bought the aggression, the tattoos, the bloody black leather jacket Lily got him for Christmas last year that he wears everywhere. But Teddy has known James since he was born, and the wanker lounging on the sofa across from him is anything _but_ cool.

As if to prove Teddy’s point, James declares pompously, “Cousin mine, I’ll go for any girl regardless of whether she’s obvious or not.”

“Sounding a _li_ ttle desperate there, son,” Dominique mocks, collapsing sideways to lean her weight on James and grind her elbow into his gut. “Is it true you’re the one that knocked up Jemima Peakes?”

James twists his entire body in a move that is so unexpectedly athletic Dominique can’t save herself. She tumbles sideways, limbs windmilling, and ends up on the floor to the deep amusement of Teddy and Young Molly.

“Fuck no,” he informs the top of her head, giving her an angelic smile when she lifts a fiery glare towards him, “Would I do such a thing?”

Dominique and Teddy both reply, “Yes,” in the exact same tone of condescending certainty, but Young Molly fires herself up in James’ defence.

“Actually,” she announces, “My friend Clara was in Ravenclaw with Jemima, and she told me the baby was, like, a healthy nine-month weight when she had it. And it was born in, like, October? I think,” she adds, looking momentarily unsure. James waves a hand, airy with disinterest, to indicate that she’s correct. Fortified, she continues, “And James didn’t start seeing her until at least the end of March, so there’s no way it could be his.”

“Why the fuck would she try to claim you as the father?” Teddy wants to know. “I mean, no offence, but you’re like the worst prospect for a dad _ever_.”

“Fuck you!” James looks genuinely hurt by this.

“James,” Teddy says patiently, “Literally this summer your mum tried to make you hold one of Luna’s twins and you took it _upside down_.”

“Then you, like, dropped it on the birthday cake,” concurs Young Molly, though she sounds quite sympathetic.

Mutinously, James lights another cigarette.

Dominique, in the process of hauling herself back onto the sofa, points out, “It’s the Potter thing. Plenty of girls would do anything to be the mother of Harry Potter’s first grandkid.”

“So it’s not my ravishing looks or my winning charm?” inquires James. Dominique, pointedly, goes off into peals of laughter.

“You can all fuck off,” James tells them, pulling the peak of his snapback lower over his face and glowering from underneath it.

To cheer him up, Dominique tickles him a bit, targeting the weak spots that have made him crease up since he was three years old, and then they all go to the pub down the road. Teddy even magnanimously buys him a drink to apologise for fucking Lily over, and then a couple of shots, and somehow they end up in some dive of a nightclub at four AM with eight new friends including a half-Veela who is looking very interestedly at Dominique, a girl who manages to fix James’ hand with a brief wave of her wand and a four-word spell despite being so drunk her eyes keep crossing, and a guy who claims he once lived with a herd of centaurs for a year.

Teddy is astonished, as he is always astonished, that these are the kinds of things that just _happen_ to James. He, Teddy, has been on a hundred nights out that he always somehow expected to play out like an episode of _Skins_ and instead usually just resulted in him and Young Molly in a chippy at three AM feeling all fuzzy and heavy while Dominique got laid somewhere. James, on the other hand, seems to have a new and ridiculous story or seven every time they talk to him about his latest nights out.

He’s so eclipsed by James and Dominique—a dangerous combination to have drinking together, since they’re both so unabashed and eager to outdo each other—that he doesn’t even bother charming anybody by trying on new faces. Instead he laughs along with everybody else as the cousins tell some childhood anecdote together, blowing everything out of proportion and making their new mates howl with laughter.

He keeps seeing Young Molly being chatted up by this one guy. She’s smiling hazily at him in that way that says she really wouldn’t mind at all if he asked her to go back to his. Teddy sends her a knowing smirk when she glances his way, then makes a face to indicate that she can do _way_ better. After all, the guy is a good two inches shorter than she is, and _everybody_ knows that Molly wants someone really tall so she doesn’t feel like a giraffe. Rose is the only other girl in the family who’s inherited that lanky Weasley height so far, and she’s not self-conscious with it the way Young Molly is. Molly’s always curling her shoulders over, trying to look smaller.

Teddy has never got it. She’s the exact right height in his opinion. For starters, he doesn’t have to crick his neck looking down at her like he does with Dominique. Then, second, when they hug she just fits excellently against him. It’s much comfier than hugging Dom, who is really fond of grinding her pointy chin into his chest for absolutely no good reason.

To emphasise the problem, he deliberately goes to the loo, then sidles past Young Molly on his way back past, brushing just close enough to sing the first line of “Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go,” so _sotto voce_ nobody but her can hear. After that every time Teddy catches her eye she has to visibly bite her lip to hold back laughter.

In the end, she can’t take the guy seriously enough to go home with him. Dominique has also apparently got no interest in the half-Veela girl who kept flirting with her, so the three of them end up in a twenty four hour café in Camden—sans James, who went whooping off in the direction of the Tower of London with his new dragon trainer friend and his best mate from school, the terrifying and irrepressible Astynome Nott, the three of them determined to steal the crown jewels—with an entire table’s worth of breakfast food before them.

“Teddy,” says Young Molly, taking a thoughtful bite out of a piece of toast, still drunk enough that she smears breadcrumbs across her cheek while doing it, “That was, like, a very dick move to sing the dwarf song. Not at you,” she adds hastily to Dominique, whose expression has veered from cheerful to murderous in less than half a second.

Teddy pauses in shovelling bacon into his mouth long enough to reach over to brush the breadcrumbs off her cheek, then blows her a kiss.

“Sorry,” he tells her, not bothering to sound like he means it, “But he was _tiny_.”

“He was basically the same height as me!” she exclaims, kicking him in the ankle. Teddy is still feeling agreeably buzzy from the alcohol, so he takes much more notice of how fun it is to wind her up than of the pain. She goes such a darling shade of pink under her riot of freckles, and she has this way of widening her eyes—somewhere between blue and green, a pleasant sort of rivery colour—that makes him think of best afternoons and happiest evenings.

Unrepentant, he shoots her a broad grin, and kicks her gently back.

Dominique at this point causes a diversion by choking on a crumb of toast, and swears at the offending food item with such intensity, her eyes watering like crazy, that the tired waitress sends them a very stiff glare from behind the counter. Dominique glares back, so to avert a crisis Young Molly hastily asks her, “Why didn’t you go home with, you know?” She waves a hand to indicate the girl whose name she can’t remember—a habit more Weasley kids have picked up off their grandfather than they realise, since Teddy has seen all but two of them do it at some point or another. It’s a peculiarly particular flap, one that snaps from the wrist through the thumb and two forefingers, travelling more slowly into the ring and pinky fingers. Teddy finds it funniest when Victoire does it, since she’s got a slightly dodgy joint that clicks whenever she moves her wrist too fast.

Dominique proceeds to mirror the gesture back at her cousin without being aware of it—there’s the briefest second where Teddy thinks she’s being mocking, but then remembers she’s much too interested in her food to have the brain space to devote to being unkind to her favourite cousin right now—and Young Molly sits back as though it answers the question.

“Not pretty enough for you?” Teddy inquires, licking ketchup off a finger and then concentrating hard on morphing his features, sculpting himself into the angular, tanned half-Veela with hair the shiny green-black of a magpie’s wing. Dominique doesn’t even bother looking up from her food, which kind of hurts his feelings.

Young Molly, apparently more drunk than Teddy was aware of since she’s never usually so forthright, bangs peremptorily on the table to get his attention and demands, “Change back. Your face is better.”

Teddy changes himself back obligingly, hair washing back to brown and face squaring out. In all honesty, he’s never been too sure about his face, and spends a lot of time wearing other people's as a result. His hair’s all right—Harry’s said he got that from his father, like his height, which he likes—but he got too much of the Black looks to be fully cool with his face as a whole. The elegant bone structure, the grey eyes, they speak volumes about a family Teddy is pretty sure were the epitome of spiteful snobs. He’s managed to inherit a rugged jawline that comes from way back in his Tonks ancestry rather than the angular Black one, but that’s not really enough to disguise his maternal lineage. It’s impossible to look at him, knowing anything of the Most Noble and Ancient House of Black, and not see it all over him.

Young Molly, though, doesn’t seem to mind. She beams at him and blows him a kiss, nodding in a very satisfied manner at him before returning to her toast. Teddy pretends to catch the kiss, just to be dramatic.

“God, get a _room_ ,” grouses Dominique, then shoves an entire roasted tomato in her mouth. She then proceeds to stare the pair of them down, her blue eyes diving dangerously between them as she chews through the tomato with her mouth wide open. Unwilling to show weakness, Teddy stares back. Young Molly, on the other hand, makes a retching sound and screws her eyes shut.

He waits until she’s swallowed before he says, “why the fuck?”

In response she just shrugs and returns to her mushrooms.

They somehow make it through breakfast without anybody storming out, and weave unsteadily back to Teddy’s flat. He tries to be noble and sleep on the sofa, giving up his frankly tiny bed to the girls, but they make the very fair point that his place is as cold as the Arctic tundra and that they would rather Drunk apparate to the depths of Gringotts than sleep without him in the bed with them.

“You run easily like _the sun_ times hotter than Molly,” says Dominique, which Teddy is reasonably sure doesn’t make sense _at all_ , but, to be fair, Young Molly has the average body temperature of a reasonably chilly iceberg.

“It’s because his dad was a _werewolf_ ,” Young Molly announces, already tucked up in bed with the duvet pulled up to her chin. She’s managed to get most of the make-up off her face and her hair—which had started the night in a messy, sophisticated sort of knot—is standing out around her face like a halo. He’d say she looks about fourteen, except the only fourteen year olds Teddy has seen recently were dressed like a hookers.

“It’s not fucking _Twilight_ ,” he replies, stripping off his jeans and shirt and tugging his favourite pyjama top off Dominique, who is trying to pull it on over her naked torso whilst simultaneously toeing her skin-tight jeans off, “Honestly. I’m not going to pull some Taylor Lautner shit and be your _space heater_.”

Dominique, who is now shivering all over as she rootles through the pile of sweaters in the bottom of his wardrobe in just her knickers, snorts loudly. Withdrawing a Grandma Molly classic from the very bottom of the pile—in a fetching mustard yellow, which Teddy is delighted to discover looks _terrible_ on her, which might make it the _only colour in existence_ that doesn’t suit her—she yanks it on over her head as she speaks.

“You do realise that making that reference reveals you have, in fact, read _and_ seen Twilight?” she inquires cheerfully, bounding past Teddy to leap onto Molly and then burrow down under the covers beside her.

Teddy manages to unearth a basically clean pair of pyjama bottoms and begins to pull them on. “Fuck off. Also I can't be Taylor Lautner, I'm probably a foot taller at _least_.”

“Even Young Moll’s like a foot taller,” points out Dominique.

Molly makes a noise of protest and says, “He’s five-seven and a half, so I’m only, like, two and a bit inches taller.”

“Why do you even know that?” Dominique is looking at her askance.

Teddy, now wearing two jumpers over his pyjamas, hurries over to join them in the bed, interrupting the conversation. It really is bloody _freezing_.

“Budge over,” he says fussily, climbing right over Dominique to squirrel down between them. Grumbling, they shift just enough to give him space to tunnel his tall frame under the duvet with them. The bed is nominally a double, but on the small side of that and almost definitely not intended for three people. Especially since Teddy has to lie sort of diagonally so his feet don’t hang over the edge. There’s a brief period of rustling and swearing until eventually they end up all tangled together. It’s oddly comfortable, and very cosy.

“Jesus, Dom, when did you last shave your legs?” Teddy demands, lifting a foot to rub it up her bristly calf, “You get way too much action to be spiky.”

“It’s never going to be your problem, you raging sexist,” she shoots back, biting his shoulder for good measure, “So fuck off.”

“I’m _smooth_ ,” Molly whispers from his other side, dissolving into helpless giggles. Dominique and Teddy exchange a look, and then burst out laughing too.

A grey December dawn is starting to creep through the cracks in Teddy’s curtains when they all subside, and he feels so weirdly at peace. Still a little bit drunk, not quite tilting into hungover, with his two favourite people in bed with him and Christmas not too far away.

He’s asleep bare seconds after Dominique starts snoring, not really conscious of the way he pulls Molly in closer to be sure she’s still, you know, _there_ and everything. Just to be sure.


	3. Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My plan was to post a new chapter every Sunday, but sadly this Sunday I was hungover to the gills and just completely forgot. Very sorry everyone. Normal posting schedule should resume this week! 
> 
> If I'd have been clever I would have started posting a week later, since this is the Christmas chapter. Enjoy!

The sound of an adult clearing their throat is a way Teddy doesn’t really rate for being woken up, but it _does_ rank above maniacal teenage girl laughter, which is what follows the throat clearing.

Already aware that he is too hungover to deal with what is about to happen, he cracks one eye open. Blearily, he narrows it and twists his head to focus on his godfather and godsister. Harry looks somewhere between confused and disapproving; Lily looks like Lily, which is to say _terrifying_.

“…Hello,” Teddy offers eventually. In his arms, Molly stirs sleepily, rolling over to press her face into his chest and go back to sleep. Dominique—her arms wrapped around his waist and her nose pressed into his back, right between his shoulder blades—doesn’t give any sign that she’s close to waking up. Teddy has never been more envious of their ability to sleep through anything. Growing up with only a grandmother in the house is no match for being raised on the havoc of siblings and—regularly—cousins.

“Good night, then, Ted?” Lily inquires merrily, leaning out past her father to grin at him. Teddy, who has been mentally preparing himself for the roasting he thought he was due the second he and Lily were in the same room together, is flummoxed.

“Excellent, thank you,” he croaks, squinting at them both, “Did we have a meeting?”

“Actually,” says Harry, trying very hard not to look at the unabashed way his nieces are curled up around his godson, “We needed to talk to you. If you don’t mind. The door was open, that’s why we came in—”

“James broke the lock,” he interrupts, not too hungover to recognise the opportunity to redirect some of that disapproval. It works like a charm. Harry’s expression darkens, and Teddy tries not to feel too pleased. It would be easier if Lily wasn’t staring at him with that creepy Cheshire Cat grin.

“Why don’t you, um,” says Harry, pushing his glasses up his nose, “Leave the girls to sleep, come have a chat. Albus is making coffee.”

Teddy has to fight back tears. Like it wasn’t enough to bring Lily? His godfather hates him, Teddy decides as the sound of footsteps begin to retreat, utterly hates him. Should have left him to brought up by bloody Malfoys.

He manages to extricate himself from Dominique and Young Molly, giving the former a pat on the head and the latter a kiss on the cheek with soft instructions to go the fuck back to sleep as though they're two years old. The second he’s gone they almost unconsciously burrow together for warmth.

Crossing his arms against the chill, stuffing his feet into the novelty dragon slippers Lucy bought him two years ago, Teddy shuffles out into the sitting room. The slippers used to roar every time he took a step, but they’re so worn now they just make this funny sort of choking wheeze every couple of metres.

He makes it less than a foot into his _own_ sitting room before someone launches themselves at him with an almighty screech. Bellowing in fear, Teddy sprawls sideways, collapsing straight onto his threadbare carpet with Lily on top of him. She scrambles to cover his face in kisses while he tries desperately to fend her off, and is saved by the sound of Albus going, “Perfect, Lil!”

Lily wraps her arms around his neck to squeeze him once tightly, then jostles him to his feet. Teddy takes a moment once upright to regain his composure. Albus is in the kitchen doorway, tapping with deep concentration at his iPhone, and utterly ignoring his godbrother.

Teddy casts Harry a hopeless, harried look. Harry just raises his eyebrows as if to point out that he is equally helpless.

Finally Al finishes whatever he’s up to and tucks his phone away into a pocket. Grinning at Teddy, he says, “Thanks, Ted.”

Teddy doesn’t even bother trying not to look miserable.

“I know for a fact I said I didn’t want to be in any more Vines after that incident with the hot dog,” he grumbles, crossing the room to throw himself onto the sofa next to his godfather, “I don’t care how many followers you have, you’re a pain in the arse.”

“He’s Vine _famous_ ,” Lily reminds them all staunchly, pushing past Albus into the kitchen. Al tweaks one of her pigtails as she goes. Next to Teddy, Harry sighs.

“Remember, though, no more magic. I can’t get you out of trouble next time.”

Albus does the airy Weasley hand gesture, this time to indicate that he promises. Teddy snorts dubiously.

It takes another ten minutes—during which time Lily emerges from the kitchen with coffee, and the three Potters fight about what to do with the rest of the day while Teddy sits and looks annoyed—before the point of their visit emerges. They all end up sat around Teddy’s messy table, Lily flipping nosily through his sketchbooks and Albus leaning over her shoulder to comment on one or the other of his drawings.

Harry leans forward, cradling his coffee mug, and says, “Look, Teddy, I need your help. This thing with Grimmauld Place isn’t going well. We’ve got this new lawyer, though, and she says she might have a plan.”

Teddy takes a fortifying sip from his cup and inquires, “How can it be going _badly_? I mean, no offence, but you’re Harry Potter? Can’t you just remind them all that you killed Voldemort and be done with it?”

Harry smiles tiredly, rubbing at his eyes behind his glasses. “If only the law worked like that.”

“It works a lot for me at Hogwarts,” Lily pipes up, smirking. Her father fixes her with a steady, warning glare. She has far too much of her mother in her to do anything other than lift her chin a little higher and spread her smirk wider.

 To save both his own and Harry's sanity, Teddy raps his knuckles on the only spare bit of table in sight and asks, "So, what do you need me for?"

"The line of _succession_ ," says Albus grandly, which means absolutely nothing to Teddy at all. To emphasise this fact, he sinks lower into his chair with a groan of despair. He has had _five hours sleep_ , he is so hungover he could _die_ , and he is _cold_. He's, like, _this_ close to succumbing to his Black genetics and avada kedavring the lot of them.

"Alright, alright," interrupts Harry, for the first time starting to look like he understands the mistake he might have made in bringing his two youngest children along—which is a big deal, for Harry, who's so loathe to recognise how difficult his kids are that it's almost legendary.

Subsiding in the face of their father's authority, Albus and Lily settle back down into their chairs and resume their whispered discussion of Teddy's sketches. He's nervous about that, but frankly doesn't have the energy to take the book off them.

"So it looks like the Wizengamot will lean towards the Malfoys' side," Harry explains, leaning his elbows on a stack of stained books on art, "Because, lawfully, Sirius should never have inherited Grimmauld Place in the first place. I mean, even Ginny has reluctantly accepted that. Nobody challenged it when he took up residence because, you know, the people who knew about it were either dead or busy with Voldemort, and he was so certain that it was his.

“But Orion Black's will is emphatic—Merlin knows the lawyers have gone over it enough times to be sure—and we just don't really have a leg to stand on, basically. Honestly, I'd rather just be done with it. The Malfoys are welcome to the place. It just feels...disloyal, somehow, to give up. So," he continues, green eyes bright with tiredness behind his glasses, "We need you, pretty much. Your grandmother is the next in the line of succession legally, making you her heir. You two could fight for it."

Albus and Lily have gone quiet. Teddy can tell, by the charged way they are trying to be cool, that this _matters_ to them. They are so _determined_ , constantly, to not care about anything their father is doing—so desperate to seem casual about the fact of their parentage, the parentage that Teddy has always so envied. This sudden investment does more to persuade Teddy than anything Harry could say. For all that they're mad and irascible and difficult, he loves the Potter kids, and he's unwilling to deliberately do anything that would cause them genuine unhappiness.

So he sits back in his chair and says, "If I can, I'll help. But, Harry," he adds hastily, cutting his godfather's relieved smile off before it can really get going, "I don't know what I can do. Nan was blasted off the family tree same as Sirius, and she hates that house besides. Even if she could lay claim I don't think she'd want to."

"They never legally disowned her, though," barges in Lily, sketchbook all but forgotten now, "the lawyer said, didn't she, Dad? Cygnus and Druella, they didn't leave her anything but they never specifically cut her out, so she could claim it. And I'm sure she would," she barrels on, with the conviction of one who has never had anything but endless love and support from her family, "I'm sure if you asked her she would."

Teddy makes a faint 'hm' noise. Experience has taught him that it is unwise to outright disagree with Lily about anything. You've got to pick your moments exceedingly carefully. And right now, with her leaning into the more dangerous of her brothers and her hazel eyes blown wide with hope, is not a moment worth picking.

"If you could just persuade her to come and hear our lawyer out," Harry says hopefully, "She's a great girl, very polite, I'm sure she'd like her. That's all we need you to do. We can meet whenever, let her set the time."

Teddy blows a breath out hard. Usually he'd just agree to whatever to get them all the hell out, but this is _more_ than anything has been so far. But, hey, they've just asked him to _try_ , right? He can do that. He can try.

"Alright," he says after a moment or two, "I'll try. Now," he continues, turning desperate eyes on Harry, "Please take these maniacs away from my hangover. _Please_."

To Teddy's unwavering gratitude, his godfather does so.

 He's so relieved that it takes him until the next day to realise that Albus and Lily pinched his sketchbook.

* * *

 

By Christmas, Teddy's Nan has agreed to join the Potters' side in the lawsuit, which Teddy finds somewhat astonishing. He goes to see her on December 23rd about it, and finds her on the phone to her sister. Teddy has never actually seen her use the telephone he insisted she installed (or, rather, the telephone he had installed on her behalf while she was away a couple of years ago, complete with permanent sticking charms so she couldn't chuck it out if she wanted to) so he sits down and makes a very smug face at her until she hangs up.

"Stop it, you look like my father when you do that," she tells him, waving her wand to start tea brewing. Teddy wipes the expression off his face hastily.

He was brought up on a curious mixture of loathing and nostalgia for his great-grandparents—his grandmother unable to put aside her fury with them for casting her out, but equally unable to forget her childhood adoration for them. He spent some very trying years as a teenager trying to sort through all his emotions about his roster of lost relatives, which coincided rather nicely with his seventeen-year-old determination to be the coolest guy in school and impress Victoire with something other than his ability to bullshit.

It resulted in what Ginny likes to call his "punk phase"—with a frankly insulting level of condescending fondness—where he wore a lot of distressed leather and endured several dozen worried lectures from his godfather. What brought him out of it was primarily being made Head Boy and Victoire losing interest in all things punk, but also the look his grandmother got whenever he wandered in with pink hair and safety pins through things.

"So," he says after a short silence where his grandmother begins to put her cup of tea together, a long and involved process she doesn't like to be distracted from, "Harry says you're going to help with the Grimmauld Place thing."

"Oh, I suppose," she replies with the level of airy disinterest only a pureblood can really achieve, stirring milk into her tea. "That was Narcissa on the phone, and I know for a fact that rotten son of hers is only after it because he thinks it's funny."

Teddy has spent enough time with cousin-twice-removed Draco to believe this. Also, anybody who can produce a son like Scorpius definitely would get a kick out of creating a hullaballoo about a house nobody even really _wants_.

"Purebloods are so weird," he comments thoughtfully. His grandmother shoots him a very stern look, and Teddy adopts his most innocent expression.

"It will be amusing to foil his plans," his Nan concedes, which just cements Teddy's opinion. He's honestly met less than three purebloods who haven't turned out to be complete maniacs, so far removed from reality it's a wonder they manage to keep functioning. The Malfoys are a pretty good example of this—Scorpius is indubitably hilarious, but Teddy's still recovering from the time they were sent to the zoo together for _cousinly bonding_. It was four years ago, but in his nightmares it's like it was yesterday.

He voices this thought to his grandmother, which provokes a long and involved argument about bloodlines and psychology. They both enjoy it immensely, and it is with a more cheerful outlook that Teddy heads out later and apparates to the Potters'.

Albus and James are, fortunately, out doing their usual frantic last-minute Christmas shopping. It's the holiday season, so Teddy is feeling more magnanimous towards them than usual, but still it's nice to get an unexpected reprieve. You've got to be in a very particular headspace to genuinely enjoy spending time with both Potter brothers, and Teddy hasn't been in it for about eleven months.

Harry lets Teddy in when he knocks, looking harried and tired, and waves him through to the kitchen with a bare "hello" before dashing back into his study and closing the door behind him. Teddy greets the shut door, feeling somewhat taken aback, then heads into the kitchen.

He finds Lily sat at the kitchen table, her hair wrapped in a complicated series of plaits around her head, eating Nutella out of the jar with her fingers. Also, she's wearing nothing but a crop top and high-waisted jeans even though it's like two degrees outside and the window is open.

Teddy wonders if she's always been this weird and he's just failed to notice it.

She gives him a very cold look.

"Hi," he offers nervously. Slowly, she licks her middle finger, pulling it out of her mouth with the kind of patient insouciance he's only ever seen Slytherins achieve, flipping him off in the process. With a sigh, Teddy throws himself into the chair across from her and inquires, "What've I done now?"

He pulls out his wand to magic the window shut, and the air begins to warm almost immediately. Lily doesn't look away from him as he does so, her eyes narrow and unblinking as a snake.

"Madeleine says," she begins slowly, making Teddy's heart sink, "that it's your fault James stood her up on their date last week."

This is one hundred percent true.

"Did James tell her that?" he demands in response, rolling his eyes, "Because your brother is a _liar_. All I did was bet him he couldn't get to Moscow and back before dinner. It's not my fault he tried to actually, like, _do_ it. Who'd be that moronic?"

Lily doesn't voice what they both know, which is that betting James he won't do something is easily five times as effective as holding a gun to his temple and forcing him to do it, no matter how moronic the bet is. Instead she scoops up another fingerful of Nutella and licks it thoughtfully.

"You shouldn't have done it," she tells him, sounding surprisingly _tired_ , which is a shock. Silly weaknesses like _tiredness_ have never put a dent in Lily Potter's stride as far as he's ever seen. He's seen her stay up three nights in a row and still have the mental acumen to ruthlessly rip apart Albus' argument for vampirism as a "sexy lifestyle choice", complete with entire memorised blocks of quotes from wizarding medical journal articles.

In fairness, Albus had only been saying it to wind her up—but her rebuttal had been awe-inspiring.

So her sounding tired prompts him to inquire, "Why not?" in considerably less reactionary tones than he might have done otherwise.

For maybe the first time in four years, Lily gives him a sincere answer. He is, at this stage, growing increasingly concerned. Sure, it's _nice_ not to get ripped into for saying literally anything for once, but it's also incredibly unsettling.

"She'd be good for him," she informs him flatly, reaching for the lid of the Nutella jar and beginning to screw it back on, "She's so beautiful he won't dare act how he usually does with girls. Also, she really _likes_ him, she told me. I don't think any girl James has gone out with has actually liked _him_ , you know? They're mostly about the _idea_ of him. Being dad's eldest, the Potter _badboy_ , all of that. Even though Albus is way more bad really. He's just bad more quietly, so the media don't pay so much attention."

Teddy takes a moment to digest this. Lily is watching him, expression guarded, fingers tight around her jar. He thinks it might have cost her quite a lot to tell him this.

It occurs to him that he's never heard any of the three Potter kids put voice to the problems they have with people because of their parentage—mostly they just hold everything in and lash out in other ways.

So instead of making his normal sarcastic response, he looks Lily square in the eye and says, "I'm sorry. I didn't know."

She shrugs across at him, trying too hard to be disinterested, and hauls herself out of her chair.

"Yeah, well, I could probably count the things you _do_ know on one hand, so _that's_ not a surprise," she retorts, flicking him on the side of the face as she goes by. Teddy's so relieved to see her back to normal that he swears at her with deep cheerfulness.

By the time Ginny powers in a few hours later, Lily has somehow got Teddy helping out wrapping presents, the pair of them covered in spellotape and having a whale of a time. Teddy can't remember the last time he hung out with Lily by herself, without one of her terrible moods hanging over them, and he's incredibly surprised to be having a blast. She's still crotchety and judgemental and way too deadpan sometimes but she's also wickedly funny and without shame, as ready to howl with laughter at herself as at him. Teddy's quite sure that a fourteen year old shouldn't be making _that's what she said_ jokes, but she really does time them well.

He stands to give Ginny a peck on the cheek, which she accepts in a flustered manner.

"I'm so behind," she exclaims as she abandons about twelve carrier bags in the middle of the kitchen floor and passes a hand across her face, "The match restarted late and that bloody Grayson still couldn't see a snitch if it rode around on the front of his broom, so I barely got to the shops in time. Oh, you angels," she adds, because she's just clocked that Teddy and Lily have an actually sizeable pile of wrapped gifts on the floor beside the table, despite the total chaos on the table in front of them.

"Teddy drew me," Lily informs her mother proudly, rooting around frantically in the wrapping paper scraps until she finds the one Teddy had captured her likeness on in hasty fluid lines, doubled over in laughter at one of her own jokes with wisps of hair escaping from her plaits. Teddy's quietly proud of it; it _feels_ like Lily in a way he'd struggle to put into words.

"Oh, how lovely," Ginny replies, marching over to examine the drawing more closely. "I do forget how good you are, Ted. Did you ever get in touch with that gallery where I know the owner?"

Teddy grimaces. "Honestly, Ginny, nobody's going to want to show my stuff. It's just silly sketches, that's all. I've seen monkeys draw better."

"Shut up," says Lily at the same time as her mother exclaims, "As if!" They're both staring at him with identical expressions, wide-eyed and intense. Teddy's always thought Lily looks more like her father than her mother, with Harry's narrow face and determined nose, but right now Lily looks pure Ginny.

 It might be the facial expression, but it could also be the freckles.

"Aw, shucks," he says, playing the coy flirt, darting a foolish look up from beneath his lashes. That sets them both roaring with laughter, and then Ginny begins to hassle them into helping her wrap the last presents.

* * *

 

Teddy passes most of Christmas merrily drunk, spending Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with his grandmother and the Malfoys, all of them stuck into the eggnog nice and early. Then he and his Nan head off to the Weasley family Christmas for dinner.

As that family has grown they've become much too big for the confines of The Burrow, no matter how many rooms get patched on, so they tend to shuffle around various homes with big enough tables.

Since this year Luna and Rolf Scamander have been invited with their baby boys, the gathering has officially become Too Big.

To counteract this, George had the bright idea of using the joke shop, and Teddy and his grandmother enter the normally packed space with approving expressions. The Weasleys have somehow cleared most of the floor space, and somebody obviously let Lucy and Louis at the Christmas decoration box because it's closer to Santa's grotto than a joke shop.

Teddy's Nan heads straight off to find Grandma Molly, and Young Molly appears out of the crush of Weasley cousins to drag him towards the mulled wine.

The whole day is a glorious, riotous feast. There's so much talking and laughter that Teddy goes hoarse shouting over the hubbub, and he eats so much he feels like he'll never be able to eat again.

He ends the day collapsed on the sofa, Young Molly and Dominique curled up with him, all of them groaning quietly and the two girls stroking each other's distended bellies in mutual sympathy. He's playing with the remote-controlled hippogriff that Victoire gave him, which is turning out to be way harder than using a levitation charm on the damn thing. Molly and Dominique get an uncontrollable fit of giggles when he flies it right into the burning fireplace and lets out a wail of despair.

Albus, naturally, captures the entire thing to post on Vine—only using a basic charm to turn the hippogriff into a helicopter in playback, since his father makes a warning face over the chaos at him—and merrily informs Teddy that he has over a hundred thousand loops already not an hour later. Teddy tells him to fuck off, but his heart's not in it.

At about seven in the evening, to Teddy's horror, Luna swans purposefully across the room to him and hands one of her twins over. She's wearing an expression that tells him that he is _taking_ the baby no matter what he says, so Teddy accepts the child despite the total panic this sets flaring.

"Here," Luna says, a little redundantly since she's already handed her son over, "Will you hold Lysander? I just need to do something about those Wrackspurts."

And with that, she marches off towards one of the three Christmas trees in the room, expression ready for war. Teddy, both hands around the baby's midriff, casts a helpless look at its father. Rolf, however, is deep in conversation with Bill, and the other baby is at the centre of a cooing circle of mothers.

"Jesus, Teddy, it's not a bomb," says Victoire from her seat opposite him, reaching forwards with deft hands to adjust his hold on Lysander, "Look, just support his head? See, easy as that."

Somehow she gets everything repositioned so Teddy is cradling the baby, which feels more secure than before, anyhow. Lysander blinks big brown eyes up at him and sticks his thumb in his mouth. Dominique completely ignores his new responsibility, but Young Molly drags herself out of her near horizontal position to hook her chin over Teddy's shoulder.

"He's so cute," she decides happily, waving a finger over the baby's face until he grabs it with a gurgle. "I want one."

"Tomorrow, honey, I'm tired," Teddy jokes, which earns him a kick in the thigh from Dominique and a very searching look from Victoire.

"We'd have, like, _adorable_ babies," says Molly in his ear with a laugh.

"Well, obviously," Teddy replies in exasperated tones, adjusting Lysander slightly, "I mean, look at us."

Dominique kicks him again, which feels unnecessary, and Victoire makes a warning noise from her chair. Young Molly chuckles, leaning into his side, her cold cold arm warming up slightly as it leaches heat from him.

Teddy is, quite unexpectedly, seized with content. He's always thought of himself as completely terrible with children, but Lysander is burbling away quite happily in his arms. And it feels sort of nice, in a very grown up and scary way, to hold a kid. He's all warm and soft and trusting. Plus, he can feel Young Molly against his side, soft and trusting in a different kind of way, and that feels very nice too. Sort of _comfortable_ , like it's a position he could be in for a very long time and still be as happy at the end as at the beginning.

He turns his head to look at Molly. She's still leaning her chin on his shoulder, and she tilts her head to give him one of her wide summer sun smiles.

"It's lovely," she murmurs, which could be to do with any number of things, and he can't be bothered to check which it is. So he just grins back, searching her face for a second longer, and then looks back down at the baby.

Later, around eleven, long after Luna has reclaimed Lysander and everybody's digested their food enough to start drinking again, Teddy's found his Nan in the crush and is helping her out of the door to apparate home. It's been a long couple of days, and honestly he's glad of the excuse to leave the Weasleys partying and get to bed, which is a bit embarrassing.

He doesn't get out scot free, though. Young Molly and Dominique fly out of the door to throw their arms around him in a big hug, mocking and jibes absent for once. Laughing, delighted, Teddy says a hundred Merry Christmases into their hair and then extricates himself to take his grandmother home.

It isn't until he's got her through her front door and put the kettle on that she stops him with a wrinkled hand on his sweater-clad chest, right over the ironic knitted reindeer, and says, "You should tell that girl."

Teddy pauses, nonplussed.

"What girl?"

"Young Molly," his nan says cryptically. "Tell her."

"Tell her what?"

"Heavens," says his grandmother with a roll of her eyes, "You're as obtuse as Sirius."

This doesn't tell Teddy anything, so he just waits with raised eyebrows. His grandmother, quite unexpectedly, laughs. Patting his chest briefly, she pulls her hand away.

"I waited a very long time to tell your grandfather I loved him," she announces, more candid than he might have ever heard her, "Because I was afraid. No need for you to make that same mistake, is there?" And she nods, like she hasn't said something completely nonsensical, like that clears everything up and sorts it out, and adds, "I made up your bed for you."

In his old bed twenty minutes later, staring up at the ceiling, Teddy takes a deep breath. She's going senile, finally, he decides. Completely senile. It was bound to happen, eventually, right? He doesn't love Young Molly. She's too— _Molly_.

Besides, love would be a very big and scary thing to feel about anyone in that way. Twenty four is too young for love like that. Hell, Young Molly's nineteen, which is _definitely_ too young. Sure, she's got a nice smile and she's the right sort of height and is much kinder to him than Dominique all the time, but that's not a high bar. And she's _Molly_.

It would be too weird.

* * *

 

Of course the next time he sees her, all he can think about is the love thing, and his stomach does this uncomfortable twisty roll that he doesn't care for at all. To cover it up, he puts her and Dominique in a headlock, and holds them there despite their wriggling until he feels better about himself. It must just be too long since his last shag is all. He's sure of it. He just needs a girlfriend, or something.

"Fuck you," says Dominique once he has released them both, "You've got to do something about that fragile masculinity, wanker. You can't keep taking it out on us."

"Fuck off," Teddy retorts serenely, shoving his hands into his pockets and smiling benevolently down at them both.

They end up going for a walk in Regent's Park, and Young Molly makes them stop by the lake so she can feed the birds.

"I thought bread was the done thing," comments Dominique in surprise as she watches Molly scatter something that looks kind of like a grain over the surface of the water.

"Oh no," she replies earnestly, turning to look at them both, hat pulled down tight over her ears, "It's, like, so bad for them. It bloats them or something? They can't get enough _nutrients_ from it," she pulls out with a triumphant air, nodding in satisfaction, "So we've gotta feed them this instead. I saw it on the news."

Charitably, she offers her bag of seeds to first Dominique—who, true to form, tries to take much too large a handful and ends up scattering stray grain everywhere—and then Teddy, who has to take a deep breath.

This is ridiculous.

This is _Molly_.

He plunges his hand into the bag, takes a handful even bigger than Dominique’s, and marches right down to the edge of the water.

“Oh, careful!” calls Young Molly.

“I’m always careful,” says Teddy, pirouetting round to prove it.

“Shit, watch the—”

Less than a second later, Teddy is sat in the lake, drenched from head to foot, and glaring at the two girls.

“You couldn’t have warned me about the duck?”

They make it precisely three seconds before they lose the battle and burst into laughter. Dominique actually laughs so hard she has to sit down.

Grumpy, shivering, Teddy hauls himself out of the lake and grimly casts a warming spell. It singes his cuffs a little, but it’s totally worth it.

“I hate you both.”

“You looooove us,” sings Young Molly.

Teddy gives her the finger, and spends the next five minutes complaining loudly to try to disguise his blush.


	4. Chapter Four

Fortunately for the whole  _complicated-feelings-about-an-almost-cousin_  thing, Teddy meets the girl he would formerly have labelled 'Absolutely Everything I Ever Wanted Except With Better Boobs' less than two months later. Well, he technically  _re-meets_  her, since it quickly emerges he presided over at least six detentions she was in as Head Boy. She's terribly nice about him being a total amnesiac regarding it, and points out very fairly that she's dyed her hair black since and was only a lowly fifth year besides.

"I mean," she says with a grin over the top of her chai latte the first time he invites her for coffee, her eyes bright with laughter, "You  _were_  going out with Victoire Weasley."

She's a McLaggen, as fate would have it, and he encounters her because he's the only person willing to bully James into apologising to her brother Faolan.

Everybody else seems to regard it as pretty fair that James went and punched the kid out for absolutely no good reason whatsoever, but Teddy feels like his inner Hufflepuff is judging him way too hard to let it go.

He threatens and bribes James in equal part into apparating over to the tiny wizarding village of Tullyaghan, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, and the two of them—plus Dominique, because she's not missed a family member getting punched since she was fourteen—turn up on the McLaggens' doorstep at four in the afternoon. Dominique invited Young Molly along too, but she declined on the basis of both her hatred of apparition—made much worse by apparating over large bodies of water—and her deep-rooted fear of kelpies.

"He still lives with his mother, Jesus," mutters James at the ground as the three of them stand in front of the McLaggen's grey stone house.

"Shut the fuck up," says Teddy, at the same time as Dominique retorts, "I'd spend the rest of my life living with  _my_  parents if it meant living somewhere this beautiful."

Since Dominique's parents have got to be the worst at keeping their sex lives private  _ever_ , this is praise indeed. Even Teddy's walked in on them in bed at three in the afternoon before.

Teddy dutifully admires the admittedly stunning surroundings. James grumbles something at his feet. Then the door opens, and quite the prettiest stranger Teddy has come across in weeks is beaming at them from within. She's got grass green eyes and gently pink cheeks and hair as dark and shiny as a kelpie's hide.

Teddy feels his stomach turn over.

Next to him, Dominique leans in to step very hard on his foot. When he glances down, she's giving him the scariest grin he's ever seen her wear.

"James Potter!" the girl announces, voice rippling with laughter, accent softening the end of his surname like a song, "I'd so hoped you'd turn up. I wanted to give you this for Faolan's black eye."

Expecting a punch to the face, James flinches so hard he nearly falls over when she bounds down the step and seizes him in a hug instead.

"He needed that terribly badly," she says merrily into the side of his head, then plants a huge kiss on his cheek and pulls back. "Come in, please! Everyone's up at the pens, so there's cake a-plenty to go around."

Dominique lets out the tiniest huff of disappointment, but James seems instantly revitalised by the knowledge he won't have to face his foe for a little longer yet. Good mood temporarily restored, he turns to give Teddy and Dominique a very knowing look, then disappears into the house after the girl.

She gives them all large slices of an amazing cake and surprises both James and Teddy immensely by being friendly to Dominique. Dominique's unrelentingly bad attitude and deadpan sarcasm tend to put most people off her within minutes of meeting her, but Eithne has the determined friendliness of a golden retriever and the thick skin that can only come from being raised with five siblings.

"Not that they're horrible," she reassures them over her teacup when the conversation comes around to her family, "Just, you know,  _siblings_."

James and Dominique nod solemnly at this point.

Eithne continues, "The younger three are alright, but Faolan and Eirnin drive me mad. Faolan can't get his head out of his arse for longer than, like, a minute at a time and Eirnin's so fecking stoic he could have killed somebody and you'd never know."

"Is he the type to kill somebody?" Teddy asks, partly because he's starting to suspect he might have come across a family even more scary than the Weasleys and partly because he shamelessly wants her attention.

Eithne makes a scoffing noise of derision and replies, "Lord, no. Couldn't hurt a fly."

As if to underscore the point, the boy in question wanders into the kitchen at this point. He's got mud all down one side of his face and body and is holding his left arm somewhat absently into his side, blood flowing freely from a deep bite mark there.

Teddy vaguely recognises him, though the last time they laid eyes on each other Teddy was in his Head Boy persona dressing down a roomful of overwrought twelve year old Hufflepuffs and Eirnin was an easy few heads shorter than he is now.

That being said, it's hard to forget a face like that.

He'd laughed outright when Lily had confessed her first cute little teenage crush on one of the McLaggen boys last year ("Oh my actual  _God_ , Teddy, you should see his  _face_ , he's so beautiful I want to  _cry_.") and had pushed her off her chair when she pretended to swoon, going into ecstasy at the recollection of his golden curls and blue, blue eyes; but now he has to admit that the boy's got the overwhelming beauty of a Botticelli angel.

James is regarding him, probably as much as a result of his good looks as of the fact of his brother, with a faintly poisonous expression. Eirnin goes up instantly and immeasurably in Teddy's opinion by completely ignoring him.

Eithne introduces her brother blithely, but only gets halfway through explaining what Teddy and co are doing there before she cuts herself off with an exasperated curse and jumps to her feet.

"You idiotic bastard," she exclaims, hauling him into the chair next to James, "Have you even tried to do something about that?"

'That' is the deep wound on his forearm, dirty and wicked-looking. Eirnin offers nothing but a sorrowful expression to his sister, and James leans in to get a closer look.

"What did that?" he inquires, foul expression vanishing and being replaced by something vaguely awestruck. Teddy and Dominique exchange a  _Look_. Trust James to be impressed solely by a bad injury.

"A kelpie," Eirnin replies softly, not looking at James. He adds to his sister, voice still gentle but calmly insistent, "I scared the shit out of the poor bastard. It's not his fault."

"Those fecking things," mutters Eithne as she begins to quickly and efficiently murmur encantations over the bite.

Within a few minutes Eirnin is divested of mud there and has nothing but a small red patch on his arm where the bite was. He doesn't make a sound as the conversation picks up around him, Teddy and James complimenting Eithne profusely on her healing skills, but Teddy catches his eyes straying thoughtfully to James—who has leaned halfway across the table to argue about the merits of the healing profession with Dominique—a fair few times, and wonders if he's trying to get the measure of the guy who laid his brother out.

Eirnin has gone to shower and they're all on a third slice of cake each by the time Faolan and his father arrive home, deep in an argument. They're roaring at each other as they come through the door, and barely pause despite realising they have company.

Teddy glances at James and Dominique and finds them watching, enraptured. He's not sure if it's a Weasley gene, this thing about watching people fight, or just a very specific James and Dominique thing. He's not experienced any of the others exhibit the same fascination.

Eithne gets up to start loudly reprimanding both her brother and father for fighting in front of guests. Out of the corner of his eye Teddy catches sight of Eirnin coming down the stairs scrubbing at his hair with a towel, catching wind of the chaos, and carefully and silently reascending the stairs without a change in facial expression.

Eventually Cormac McLaggen lets out a cry of disgust and jabs a threatening finger right in front of his son's face.

"If you say one more thing about it," he bellows at Faolan, almost purple in the face with anger, "I'll string you out for the bloody kelpies!" Then he turns and, shooting a brief glare at the three young people cowering at his table, storms out of the room.

"What did you say to him now?" Eithne demands of her brother in disgust. Faolan, who has finally clocked James sat at the table, is torn between laughing and glaring.

"Told him his kelpies were a waste of time and effort," he replies, not taking his eyes off James, "Then told him he was old and past it."

Eithne makes a noise of tired scorn, clearly all too familiar with the play of events, and comments, "You've got to stop mobbing him up like that."

Faolan finally looks away from James and gives her a flat, blue-eyed stare. He's truculent and insouciant, and the only person in a while Teddy has seen look so monumentally unconcerned about a problem.

He replies, "Why?" in a blank tone to his sister, and ignores the dramatic roll of her eyes that is the response he gets. Instead he turns back to James, and the two boys recommence their silent glaring.

Teddy decides at this point that it would probably be wise to leave James and Faolan to have this out. Pinning James with a determined scowl, hoping to remind him of all the things he'd told him as they were walking up to the house— _the papers are already calling it a_ feud _, James, and the last thing your parents need is a problem with the McLaggens when they've got so much else going_   _on_ —Teddy has to all but drag Dominique from the room.

She's so disgusted at being removed from where the action is happening that she apparates straight home without so much as a goodbye.

Eithne, staring at the space where she had been standing, comments without any apparent trace of irony, "I like her."

Teddy lets out a surprised huff of laughter, and the sweetness of the smile she shoots him in response gives him the courage to ask her out for a drink.

At almost the precise second he apparates home to his freezing flat a short while later, his phone lights up with a text from Dominique. She's sent him a series of increasingly inappropriate emojis encouraging him to bang Eithne, inexplicably ending with one of a poodle, and then a stern warning to take the date seriously.

 _Enya probably has a thing for pretentious loser artist types_ , she reassures him magnanimously.

Teddy, to show her what he thinks of that, allows the little "read" tick to display for six hours without response. Then, just as he's finishing the last of his whiskey (disappearing depressingly fast), he sends her a text back.

_It's spelled Eithne, you colossal dick_

Quick as a flash, she comes back with,  _well you'd know about colossal dicks. what do u do, look at yours + imagine one eight times bigger?_

He is not willing to admit that he is impressed by her wit. He is, however,  _so_  tempted to send her a dick pic to prove her point inaccurate.

Unfortunately, this is Dominique, and she'd undoubtedly disseminate it instantly amongst her family, friends, and various contacts in the media. So he contents himself with sending her a snapchat of him screaming into his camera for six seconds and turns his phone off to sleep.

When he wakes up in the morning, she's sent him a snapchat back of herself and Young Molly, snuggled up in bed together the night before. They're both bare-faced, tangled up together, and Dominique says, "It's okay to be insecure about penis size, Edward," while Young Molly giggles helplessly and just about chokes out, "It's not what you've got, it's how you use it!" There's a burst of manic laughter and then the video cuts out abruptly.

"Well, fuck you guys," Teddy tells his phone, and shuffles out of bed to get coffee.

As a twelfth date, because Eithne is insatiably curious about the Potter/Malfoy court case shenanigans—like the rest of the wizarding world—he takes her for an afternoon's proceedings. It's frankly unbelievable that the case has dragged on this long, but there have been all sorts of breaks as new evidence arises or new pieces of legislation are called upon. Harry keeps complaining that it's being deliberately held up and dragged out to garner additional media coverage. How the media could cover it  _more_ , Teddy has no idea. The Potters are pretty used to being dogged by reporters constantly, but Teddy's finding it increasingly irksome that they seem suddenly so interested in  _him_.

It's hardly a "bitter, inter-family feud". He's gone out for drinks with Draco and Astoria more in the two months since he and his nan got on board with the Potters than he had in the six years preceding, and is actually finding himself getting along with them very well despite the whole Grimmauld Place situation.

Astoria has a perpetual air of boredom, but she's wickedly sarcastic and not afraid to enjoy a glass of wine or several at two in the afternoon, which Teddy admires greatly in a woman.

Also, he feels increasingly guilty. His nan has attended every single court date since they signed up to help Harry, and he's missed over half. The papers won't bloody shut up about it. He's not being disloyal, or whatever—as if he could ever be disloyal to Harry without being ripped apart by a ravening mob of Boy-Who-Lived fans—he's just got lots of other things to occupy his time.

Teddy is so used to being around Dominique and Young Molly that when he and Eithne leave court that afternoon and she offers actual sound, insightful commentary on the case, he isn't precisely sure what to do with it. She buys him a coffee, still actually listening to his thoughts on the whole thing, and they sit and chat on a bench near the Ministry for over an hour.

To try to convey the unexpected gratitude and deep fondness that has washed over him for her, Teddy draws her that night. She's fast asleep against his sheets, small nose pressed against his pillow and her mouth open on a slant. He captures the deep curve of her waist disappearing under the duvet, the way the moonlight catches at her heavy breasts, spends a good hour getting the slick dark spill of her hair just right.

She wakes up with a little sigh, a frown pulling down between her eyes. Rolling over, she spots him in the window and smiles, soft and slow and sleepy.

"What're you doing all the way over there? Aren't you cold?"

He is, but he's also so used to the arctic conditions in this flat that it's not bothering him especially. Eithne, brought up in a house that has a fire roaring and heating up full whack every second it's not warm outside, has yet to acclimatise.

"It's not so bad," he replies, voice as quiet as hers in the silver dark of the room. They look at each other steadily for a moment or two more. Eithne's gone back to frowning, just slightly. Teddy understands, though he's not sure how, that this is the point where she makes a decision about whether she's in this for good, whether she wants to wake up to his face a bunch more times or whether this has just been a dalliance the whole way through.

She asks, "Do you like me, Teddy?"

"How could I not?" he responds, the words as true as they are unexpected to him. The only thing counting against her is the fact of her perhaps not being exactly the girl he thinks about in a way he can't admit to. She's beautiful and warm and she makes him laugh and she cares about things, deeply and relentlessly. How anybody could not like her is genuinely beyond him.

She's got an expression that says she's building up to say something big, something heavy, when there's a stupendous crash from his front door. Swearing, fearful, Teddy tumbles out of the bedroom into his sitting room and finds James being hefted onto the sofa by a furious black-haired girl, his door hanging off its hinges at a dangerous angle behind her.

"I  _just had that fixed_!" he bellows at her. Eithne presses up behind him, swathed in bedsheets.

Astynome Nott—because of course his luck is that bad—nods a brief hello to Eithne and then fixes Teddy with an awe-inspiring scowl. She's got her hair pulled into two braids and their tightness lends her face an even more austere slant, makes her blue eyes look even more widely terrifying.

If Teddy's being totally honest with himself, there are few things in the world that frighten him more than she does. It's not  _that_  embarrassing, therefore, that he takes a hasty and instinctive step away from her.

"This fucker," she growls, jabbing her head at her unconscious best friend, now sprawled out on Teddy's couch, "Just nearly got me  _arrested_. By  _Muggles_!" and she ends on a note of such infuriated derision that Teddy nearly laughs. Trust a pureblood.

"Wait," pipes up Eithne, "The police chased you?"

"I think I lost them around the corner," says Asta with an irritable shake of her shoulders, "I'm too drunk to apparate and this is the closest place I could think of."

Teddy turns away from her anger as Eithne strides across to the window, throwing it open and muttering a curse at the freezing air before cursing again, louder, as she leans out and counts at least five police officers pounding towards the front door below.

"Looks like you didn't lose them," she says to Asta, already in motion. She and Teddy had spent the evening enjoying themselves on the sofa before moving to the bedroom, so their wands are still lolling carelessly on the lopsided coffee table.

"Here," she exclaims, tossing Teddy his wand and, pausing only to heft up the bedsheets which are in serious danger of slipping, issues a series of spells at him. "You too," she says, so naturally authoritative that even mulish Asta snaps to, grabbing James' wand where it's poking out of his jeans and repeating the spells back much more fluidly than Teddy thinks is fair, if she's had as much to drink as he reckons.

Eithne makes the pair of them repeat the spells a couple of times and then, with the sound of feet pounding on the stairs, they hastily cast them all. A deep silence settles over the apartment, the door repositioned on its hinges in the space between one second and the next, and all three hold their breath as the footsteps outside reach the landing.

There's the low murmur of voices and then—magically—the sound of the policemen retreating.

Eithne sags down onto the sofa, just avoiding James' legs, with a deep sigh of relief. Teddy is torn between kissing her and yelling at Asta. And, hey, now he's not about to be arrested he's got time to do both, so he swoops in dramatically to plant a huge kiss on Eithne's cheek before whirling on Astynome.

Blank-eyed, cold, she stares back up at him. Her head has tilted just a little, gaze implacable as a snake. He's heard people say that she reminds them of Dominique, or vice versa, but there's something impossibly icy about Asta. Dominique's tough and brash and has no tolerance for fools, but there's an essential warmth at the centre of her. If Asta Nott has the same thing, Teddy's yet to see any inkling of it.

"Okay," he says, trying not to sound as tired as he feels, "Tell me what happened."

She gives him this slow, insolent blink. Teddy understands suddenly where Lily learnt it from. Gathering all his patience, he presses, "Come on, tell us. You can't just barge in here and not say anything."

"Word is," replies Asta slowly, sinking down onto the arm of the sofa, prim buttocks right above James' unconscious head, "Telling you things leads to them getting back to parents."

Teddy cannot  _believe_  the Lily thing is still being held against him. It's been  _months_.

"She was  _fourteen_ ," he groans, because nobody will  _ever_  see his side of things. Abruptly tired and fed up, sick of Potters and everybody to do with them, he leans to pull Eithne up from the sofa and leads her off towards the bedroom. Over his shoulder to Asta he tosses, "Sulk, then. There's blankets in the boiler cupboard. Please be gone by the time we get up."

As it goes, she does disappear, but leaves an uncommonly bashful James behind. He actually  _hovers_  around Teddy in the kitchen, stunningly insecure, and mutters three apologies between the pancakes Teddy makes him. Teddy's so taken aback by this personality switch that he doesn't even mock him for it.

"So, you want to talk about it?" Teddy offers eventually, once they're sat at the table with empty plates between them. Eithne has gone off to work with the determined expression of someone who is too tired to handle anything but is going to do it anyway, and they are alone in the cold of Teddy's flat.

"Um," says James, hugging the three sweaters of Teddy's he's filched closer to himself, "Not really."

"Okay," Teddy tells him easily, lounging back, pressing one thoughtful hand to his over-full stomach, "But, like, you do know you can? If you want. Contrary to popular opinion I wouldn't actually tell anyone."

James nods, just a little duck of his head, this funny look on his face. He seems almost  _insecure_ , like there really is something he wants to say but he can't figure out how to broach it. Teddy, digging around with his tongue for a trapped scrap of bacon, waits patiently.

"I just," James begins abruptly, fiddling with the cuffs of his top sweater, "I kind of—like someone? I mean a lot. And it's just...I…they're a  _good_  person, you know? And we slept together, a couple of months ago, and now—no phone calls, nothing. And I usually I would be the one not calling, but I actually  _tried_. And there wasn't even a voicemail to leave a message on. And now I feel like a twat."

Teddy frowns thoughtfully across at him. James, suddenly, in that horrible mustard yellow sweater and his hair a wreck and the distant remnants of a black eye, looks very young. Teddy can't help a grin, sudden and unexpected.

A scowl descends instantly over James' face, his reaction automatic.

"That's right, laugh at my pain," he exclaims darkly, huffing a couple of centimetres down in his chair, "I knew you bloody would."

"No, no, it's not that," Teddy reassures him hastily, reaching out a hand and waving it in his face, "I just—honestly, the number of times your cousins have had their hearts broken, and you've just swanned right through it all  _doing_  the breaking, you know? This is just your turn."

This doesn't seem to improve James' temper, so Teddy bites down on his laughter and digs out his responsible godbrother hat. He rather thought he'd have more time before he wore it again, but James just looks so  _morose_. He can't help himself.

"Look," Teddy tells him, leaning forwards, balancing his elbows on the table, "We've all got to have our hearts broken. It builds character."

"It's not fucking  _heartbreak_ , Jesus," James grumbles, "I'm not in  _love._ It was just  _nice_ , that's all. And I'm  _interested_. Not fucking lovesick."

"Okay, okay," Teddy surrenders, unable to help smiling again. "Look, why don't you do one of those grand gestures? Turn up on her doorstep. Actually do it in person rather than trying the phone. Lily says she's a nice girl, so—"

"Who the fuck are you talking about?" James interrupts, staring at him with eyes wide, genuinely confused.

Teddy gives him the confused look right back.

"Uh, Maddie Avery?" he ventures, his tone implying that it should be obvious. "You two have a thing, right?"

James looks at him askance, every inch suggesting that Teddy is a total moron for thinking this.

"So, that's a no?" Teddy presses.

" _Yeah_ , it's a no," James retorts, rolling his eyes, "Jesus. Maddie Avery."

"You were  _seeing_  her," Teddy reminds him, determined not to be treated like a complete idiot for making the obvious assumption, "Lily said she really  _liked_  you."

James scrubs a hand over his face, looking suddenly as tired as Lily had that night before Christmas in the Potters' kitchen, her hair all up in braids.

"She's nice," he offers after a moment, giving that much ground, "Much nicer than I thought. But I don't—she wants  _security_ , all that bullshit. And I didn't fancy her enough to make her think I could give it."

"But this other girl," Teddy probes, examining James carefully, "You think you could for her?"

James hesitates. He hesitates for a long time, hovering on the edge of something. Some grand confession. But it doesn't come. Instead he kind of deflates, shrugs, says, "Maybe."

"Well then," Teddy tells him, "My advice still stands. Actually go find her, don't just call or tweet or whatever. Turn up on her doorstep and talk to her. You might be surprised."

James doesn't reply to that. He just starts poking at his syrup-covered plate, expression frightful. He looks like a hazard sign, glaring and warning:  _danger henceforth_.

At that point, Teddy wisely decides to let the topic go, and doesn't protest too much when James glances up abruptly, face turning mischievous, and asks, "So, how's things going with you and Eithne?"

Teddy closes up instantly. He does not want Potters in his business, thanks  _so_  much.

"Aw, come on," says James encouragingly, wiggling his eyebrows, "I know for a solid fact she was fully in love with you  _weeks_  ago."

"How do you know that?" Teddy demands, but James is not to be waylaid.

"Come on, come on," he teases, flicking syrup at him, "Are we going to be calling her godsister-in-law?"

"Jesus, it's been, like, three months," Teddy snips, swiping syrup off his own cheek, "Can't you keep your nose to yourself?"

"No," James replies unapologetically.

Teddy pulls a face at him.

James, grinning wickedly, pulls one right back.

Teddy keeps track, albeit absent-mindedly, of James over the weeks that follow. After a brief period of total chaos which sees him, among other things, getting caught in bed with the Minister for Magic's thirty three year old wife, he seems to level off. Steady out, somehow.

Around the same time as that happens Teddy and his Nan win the lawsuit brought by the Malfoys, and go out for a family dinner to commiserate.

"It's a shame," concedes Draco as he spears a segment of pork, shrugging philosophically, "But honestly it was worth it just to see Potter's face."

"Merlin," huffs Astoria, already three glasses of wine in, "You're such a bloody schoolboy. Oops, sorry," she adds hastily, glancing between her mother- and father-in-law and Teddy's grandmother, "But, seriously. You've got to let it  _go_."

Teddy agrees, and is instinctively inclined to back her up since she always takes his side in arguments, but he keeps getting distracted by Scorpius. His cousin twice removed is Up To Something, the capitals certainly necessary. Teddy can tell from the wicked glitter in his eyes, the sly slant to his smirk.

"Whatever you're about to do," Teddy murmurs to him under the cover of their adult relatives' bickering, " _Do not_."

"I'm not up to  _anything_ , cousin mine," retorts Scorpius with wounded innocence, actually pressing a hand over his heart, "What little faith you have in me!"

Roughly ten seconds later a girl bounces up to their table, fusses until a waiter brings her a chair, plonks herself down, and drags Scorpius into a full on-the-mouth kiss. Teddy is pretty sure he sees a  _tongue_  or two involved.

"What," says Teddy stupidly.

"Hi, Mrs Tonks," bubbles Lily Potter, leaning across him to give his grandmother a kiss on the cheek, "It's lovely to see you. And Mr and Mrs Malfoy. And Mr and Mrs Malfoy," she continues, grinning at Scorpius' parents and grandparents one after the other. She has red lipstick smudged on one side of her mouth and she's almost vibrating with mischief. She's also evidently snuck out of school  _again_ —though Teddy's not sure he wants to know how any more—since she's still wearing her uniform, skirt rolled over at the waist and her Slytherin tie tugged loose and inviting.

"Um," pipes up Draco, his glass of wine stuck halfway between his lips and the table.

"Mum, Dad," Scorpius announces, one indolent arm curling around the back of Lily's chair, "I'd like you to meet my girlfriend. I think you know Lily Potter?"

It takes Teddy twenty minutes to extricate Lily from the table long enough to corner her by the loos and demand an explanation.

"Oh, come on," she hisses, rolling her eyes, "It's  _hilarious_. Did you see his dad's  _face_? We're doing my parents on Sunday. James is going to absolutely die of laughter."

"You and  _Scorpius_?" is all Teddy can say.

"Oh, God, we're not actually  _dating_ , ew," replies Lily with immense disdain, "We just got, like, talking the other night when I was hanging out with him and Al and we all thought it would be funny. Which it was, obviously."

Teddy slightly wants to throttle her, but he masters the urge.

"I'm telling on you," he says instead, and fully intends to bolt back to the table to do so. Unfortunately she's fucking quick off the draw, and she has her wand out and to his throat before he has a chance.

"I'll hex your balls right off," she warns, and he knows she would.

"You can't do magic outside of school," he reminds her, trying not to look too afraid, "Remember?"

Lily just scoffs. "You want to see the Ministry try to expel  _me_?"

"Actually, kind of," replies Teddy, which is a bad thing to say. She doesn't hex his balls off, but she does kick him very hard in them and then leave him wheezing on the floor.

By the time he picks himself up Lily has defrosted Draco off enough to be telling him why his latest electronic investment is a waste of time without getting escorted off the premises, and Astoria has started on the second bottle of wine. She waves it at Teddy, who sits gingerly back in seat and nods at her desperately.

Another half bottle in and the evening is looking rosier. By the time they all troop outside to go home Teddy is having to hold Astoria carefully upright and the Malfoys seem to have resigned themselves to their fate.

Scorpius' grandfather watches his grandson grab Lily by the shoulder and drag her into another disgustingly sloppy kiss with the expression of a man who has looked death in the face and finds  _this_  harder to deal with.

All the same, he doesn't hex them apart, so Teddy supposes that's something.

"Come on, Lily, you can stay with me," suggests Teddy, palming Astoria off on her husband and grabbing his godsister by the arm, "It's not far."

"She was going to come home with me," argues Scorpius, grabbing her other arm.

"She was  _not_ ," say both Draco and Teddy at the precise same time. Lily, stuck in the middle, is wearing this huge Cheshire cat grin. Teddy glares down at her, his most warning expression, and she heaves out this great sigh of acquiescence.

"Don't worry," she says, turning to Scorpius and extricating herself from his grasp, "I'll see you at the weekend? We've got—" whatever she says at this point is inaudible, since she leans in to whisper it right in his ear. Scorpius cracks a wicked smirk and Teddy wonders if it's too late to turn to religion.

He exchanges one very put-upon and meaningful look with Draco and then, gripping Lily tighter by the arm, apparates them both away.

Eithne comes home from a dog shift to find Lily asleep on the couch and Teddy sat with a beer in one hand and a pencil in the other, a sketchbook propped precariously against his knee as he captures her likeness. He likes sketching Lily, though he's aware that it's probably a bit weird to be drawing a fifteen year old girl more regularly than anything else. There's something about Lily's personality that seems to lend itself to being presented in brief, fluid lines—it feels more  _Lily_  than any of the photos he's seen of her over the years. Something about the ephemerality of it, maybe. The rush.

Eithne comes in and moves up behind him, slides warm hands over his shoulders and down his chest, under his sweater.

"Good day at work?" he murmurs, though there's little point to keeping his voice down. Lily sleeps like her eldest brother—like the  _dead_ , really. He's seen Albus throw up on her and not wake her up.

"Exhausting," she admits, "We had a kid in whose brother hexed all her skin off."

"But Lily's been with me all evening," Teddy says with a grin. Eithne laughs in his ear, low and soft, and her hands delve further downwards. It's more than the shitty joke deserves. Teddy leans his head back against her chest, her hair falling around his face, and makes a slight, happy noise.

"Come to bed," she suggests, pulling away slowly. Teddy doesn't need any more encouragement than that.

They make love lazily, muffling moans in each other's mouths, moving with familiarity over each other's most sensitive spots—the point on Teddy's neck where it meets his shoulder, the inside of Eithne's wrists—and Teddy wakes up late the next morning feeling blissed out and lethargic.

When he shuffles out into the sitting room, Lily is still flat out asleep on the sofa. He shakes her roughly awake and apparates her back to Hogwarts still in his pyjamas.

"You're such a dick," she says grumpily as he dumps her, yawning, at the gates.

"Option two was your parents'," he points out. To be a good godbrother, he does pull his jumper off and cram it down over her head in case of  _frostbite_  or whatever, but that's as far as he's willing to go when there's a beautiful girl waiting in his flat for him.

Lily flicks him off as he marches a couple of metres off to disapparate. He just grins at her, utterly unabashed, and returns home.

Eithne is standing in the kitchen looking helplessly at a frying pan, so Teddy takes over as quickly as he can. She  _likes_  to cook, that's the problem. Well, more precisely, she likes to cook but she  _cannot cook for shit_ , which has resulted in more charcoal meals than Teddy cares to remember.

He makes her pancakes, his specialty, and they eat them across the table from each other, licking syrup off each other's fingers and trading sticky kisses in the morning sun. It's so  _domestic_ , Teddy thinks—and the surprise is that he doesn't mind at all. He _likes_  it. He wants more mornings like this.

"So," she says as she's scraping up her last strawberry. Teddy, recognising her  _I've got gossip_  tone, sits forward eagerly. Grinning, she announces, "My brother—Eirnin—has got a  _girlfriend_."

" _No_ ," replies Teddy, who can't quite picture Eirnin McLaggen in a relationship with anything except one of his father's kelpies, "Who?!"

"We've no idea," Eithne responds sadly, "But he's been out a lot more than he ever was, and he's come late to Dad's pens three weeks in a row with new hickeys, and two days ago Faolan followed him to this flat in Fulham and he looked  _really_  shifty as he went inside."

Teddy is enchanted. Not just gossip, but gossip about a  _mystery_. How exciting. However, Eithne hasn't got any more information on the topic, so after they've spent a merry ten minutes exhausting all the options they can think of—daughter of father's business rival, much older woman,  _married_  woman—the topic turns to holidays.

Before Teddy's quite sure how it's happened he's been invited to journey with the McLaggens to the Tzykanion tournament held annually just outside Mumbai, the absolute pinnacle of the calendar for those who partake in the dangerous sport.

Also before he's quite sure how it's happened, he's said yes.

"But, like," he has to demand, "They're not going to be...like,  _weird_  about me going? Have you brought a guy before?"

She rolls her eyes and replies, "Of course. We go  _every_  year. We might even try persuade Eirnin to bring his secret love. Wouldn't that be fun?"

Actually, Teddy thinks, that  _might_  be. He'll have to decide later.

"So," Eithne asks next, leaning back in her chair and pulling her tea to her lips, "Any gossip from your family?"

"Oh," Teddy responds absently, waving a hand, "Nothing that exciting. Lily has teamed up with Scorpius to shock and horrify their parents by pretend to be going out. Albus just hit like three million Vine followers or something. Oh, and not only is James moving into his own place, but we think he's  _in love_."

This gets her attention. She nearly spills her tea she jumps forward so fast.

"No way. James Potter in love? No way. Who with?"

"We don't know," replies Teddy sadly, "But he told me he liked someone a couple of months ago, and he's been  _awfully_  well-behaved recently. It's all very suspicious."

"Well," she says cheerfully, "That's very exciting. You need to investigate this."

Since Teddy still has no job, he figures that—well, there's no  _harm_  in it, right?

"Such a lot of mystery going around," he points out jovially, picking up his mug of coffee. Eithne, laughing, agrees.


	5. Chapter Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm disorganised and useless and very sorry about the delay in getting this posted.

Chapter Five

 

Pretending to be overwhelmed at the idea of James living alone, Teddy—along with most members of the Weasley clan old enough to do so, he's pretty sure—starts dropping in on him to coax him out for meals or ensure he's not drowning in his own filth. If he’s snooping around to see if he can figure out who the mystery love is, well, it’s not like it’s causing any problems.

The fact that the flat looks clean and the fridge well-stocked and James well-fed every time he goes around only serves to provoke his suspicion. There is something exceedingly _not right_ about the whole picture.

It starts to possess Teddy. One time he goes around and there’s a crash from the bedroom right after James has let him in—wearing a jumper back to front—that sounds an awful lot like a person scrambling for a hiding space. Teddy exchanges one brief look with James, whose expression transforms abruptly from innocent to horrified, and then sprints for the bedroom.

James grabs at him, inherited reflexes showing in the way that he manages to bundle Teddy to the floor. Teddy, however, is not afraid to make use of his extra inches or muscle, and fights his way determinedly out of the hold. He just about stumbles into the bedroom before James tackles him down again. There’s evidence everywhere of an _assignation_ : rumpled bedsheets, discarded clothes—though only James’, as far as Teddy can tell—and a box of condoms scattered all over the floor. Of the girl, however, there is no sign.

“Who is it,” Teddy demands, twisting on the ground to grab his godbrother in a headlock, wrapping him up between his knees to pin him absolutely, “Who is it, who is it, who is it.”

“Fuck off!” James shrieks, wriggling like hell.

The kid’s a tight-lipped bastard, so even after trying everything he can think off—he doesn’t sniff at Chinese burns, at tickling, _anything_ that used to work when they were younger—Teddy is forced to let him go none the wiser.

He doesn’t find out who it is until the summer. Not even entire afternoons with Dominique and Young Molly spent frantically analysing any clue for who could be yields fruit.

Teddy has dragged Eithne around all the shops with him, pockets bulging with inheritance money from his Nan. He’s forcing her to pick him out clothing she deems suitable for holidaying with her family.

Teddy’s never been on holiday with a girlfriend’s family before—the Weasleys, in his opinion, don’t really count. Besides, they never really went abroad anywhere, just shuffled around various relatives’ houses. So he’s had to get himself about a dozen new hot-weather outfits, three new pairs of trunks, sunglasses, hats, the whole shebang.

He and Eithne join the family three days late. She has to stay at work a little while longer, and Teddy wasn’t exactly thrilled at the idea of joining the McLaggens without her as back-up.

They pitch up to the sprawling complex outside Mumbai travel-wrecked and sweaty long after everybody else has settled in, hazy-eyed with tiredness and eager for the promise of a relaxing fortnight in the heat.

Cormac comes out to greet them, dragging Eithne into a hug and clasping Teddy on the shoulder with eye-watering strength. For reasons bemusing to Teddy, his girlfriend’s father _likes_ him. He doesn’t get why even a little bit but he’s hardly about to question such a blessing.

Determined to stay awake to combat jetlag, Teddy leaves Eithne to soak in the pool with her mother and younger sisters and goes to have a poke around the yard. It’s attached to the beautiful villa, lots of cool white stables, the vicious sounds of kelpies inside not at _all_ reassuring.

He’s kind of fascinated by the creatures, truth be told. He’s been told repeatedly that they’re harmless so long as they’re wearing the special bridles—but he still doesn’t trust them an inch, and cannot for the life of him fathom the attraction of a sport where a bad fall might result in you getting _eaten_.

(“That’s the _point_ ,” Faolan had told him in exasperation one of the first times he went for dinner with the McLaggens, “Where’s the fun if there’s no danger?”

Teddy had felt like pointing out that the Muggles seemed to enjoy the game fine without the flesh-eating horses, but that had been before he knew the family that well and so he’d been forced to agree.)

All the same, he likes to stare at them—all the danger and anger—and so he wanders around the big square of the yard, shaded by plants and awnings, and peers in the odd stall.

It’s in an empty box that he gets one of the greatest shocks of his life. He’s got bolder as he walks around and doesn’t get his head bitten off, so he starts poking his head in boxes where the occupant isn’t hanging out to watch him. At one point he does nearly bang his nose into a kelpie who happens to be coming to have a look outside at the precise same moment, but the animal seems as surprised as him so Teddy puts that one down as a good life lesson.

He’s cautiously peering into the final box, the dimness inside compared to the sun outside making it difficult for his eyes to adjust. Gradually, he makes out what looks decidedly _not_ like a kelpie. What it looks like, in fact, is a pair of boys twined together in the straw, kissing heatedly, a tanned pair of hands woven into blond hair and another pair moving assuredly, lovingly, over a wicked barbed tattoo.

“James?” says Teddy, before his brain can catch up with his mouth.

His godbrother rears back with a gasp, mouth bruised, hair tousled and sweaty. Beneath him Eirnin McLaggen looks—well, _ravished_ is the only word for it. His hair has gone dark gold with sweat and his eyes are blown-wide and limpid. He looks, Teddy finds himself thinking bizarrely, like those paintings of nymphs being spied on by gods. Beautiful, loose-limbed, dripping with desire.

_James and Eirnin._

Teddy is trying so hard to readjust the pieces in his head that all he can do is stand there dumbly as James scrambles to pull his trousers up and clamber to his feet.

“You didn’t tell me he was coming,” he hisses to Eirnin, who’s stood up too and is buttoning his own shorts more slowly. Eirnin gives this little shrug and murmurs something, absently reaching to pull some straw out of James’ hair. Furiously red, James shudders his hands away, already moving forward.

Teddy only needs one look at the hurt on Eirnin’s face to step forward and kick his brain back into gear.

“Shit,” he says hastily, grabbing the top of the stable door with both hands, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to react like—you just took me by surprise? I assumed it was a _girl_ this whole time, man. You didn’t _say_.”

James shrugs. He’s wired again, tense and dangerous, glowering out at Teddy from beneath damp red curls.

“Didn’t want to say,” he retorts shortly, his fists bunching slowly by his sides. In the dimness behind him, Eirnin is watching Teddy very carefully.

“Well,” Teddy replies, telling himself frantically to be cool. He knows a tonne of gay people, right? It’s no different if it’s _James_.  It’s just— _unexpected_. He just has to be cool. Why wouldn’t he be cool? He’s _so_ cool. To prove it, he takes a deep breath and forges on, “Does your family know?”

“Lily,” says James with another shrug, terse and defensive, “She’s known for months.”

“Oh,” Teddy answers carefully, taking a step back from the door now, “Look, I won’t tell anyone. Not until you want, right?”

James doesn’t thank him. He just moves forward, slowly, cautiously, like a lion assessing a rival. Teddy lifts both hands in the air as if in surrender, and then suddenly finds himself laughing his head off.

“Shit,” he says through his chuckles, “Shit, shit.” James looks nonplussed, so Teddy elaborates, “Albus is going to be _so_ pissed off I knew before him.”

There’s the briefest moment where it looks like James isn’t going to crack, but then suddenly his face splits open in this rueful, summersun grin.

“Fuck,” he says, “You’re right. _Fuck_.”

After that, it’s easier to convince him that he’s not going to tell, and Teddy leaves them to head back to the villa. He joins Eithne in the pool, grinning fit to burst, and refuses to tell her anything more than that he’s figured out who her brother’s secret lover is no matter how much she prods about it.

It’s worth holding out just for the look of astonishment on her face when her mum says, “Go and fetch Eirnin and James, would you love?” to her little sister.

She turns to Teddy with her eyes on stalks when the two appear. Teddy only stops laughing long enough to draw her aside.

“It’s on the down-low,” he tells her in a low voice, “James said your parents think they’re friends. For now.”

“Oh my god,” exclaims Eithne, apparently unable to say anything else. “I thought it was a girl!”

“I _know_ ,” says Teddy, wide-eyed, “Me fucking too. I feel like a twat about it.”

“How did _you_ find out?” she demands, right before they rejoin her family for dinner.

“Caught them fucking in a loose box,” he replies nonchalantly, and then legs it to the table before she can grab him and shriek in incoherent surprise in his face.

After that, Teddy can’t help but enjoy the holiday immensely. He’s always loved being in on a secret very few other people know about, and he can’t _resist_ winding James up every time he and Eirnin disappear to “sight see” or any other excuse they can come up with. He’s just too easy a target; he always goes this startling shade of red under his tan.

Also, it’s just _fun_. The McLaggens really know how to have a good time. They’re primarily there to sell their kelpies on the most elite circuit in the world, but they attend plenty of matches and fancy dinners in the meantime. Teddy gets invited to many fewer of the latter than Eithne, not being a McLaggen. She loyally bows out of most to keep him company, but he insists that she goes to at least a few.

On these nights Teddy and James stay in the sprawling villa with the three younger McLaggen kids—two girls and a boy—and Faolan’s friend Fajr, the three older ones babysitting with the same reckless abandon that Teddy used to babysit the Potters.

It involves a lot of sugar and not much rule-following, but on the bright side they quickly become the object of absolute hero-worship, to the extent where Teddy and James both struggle to brush off any combination of a ten, eight and six year old whenever they want to slope off to bed with their respective McLaggens.

Teddy, therefore, returns to London with an excellent tan, a newfound enjoyment for spending time messing about with kids, and a secret boyfriend he can use to blackmail his godbrother into not pissing him off for a while yet.

He also thinks maybe—just maybe—he might _finally_ be falling in love with Eithne. _Properly_ loving her, not just feeling fond of her, not just fancying her. He’s _thrilled_ , in all honesty. He’s been determined to make it work regardless of his feelings, no matter how selfish that makes him. He needs this relationship. Something steady, something lovely. Something _adult_.

Unfortunately, as with most good things, this doesn’t last. When it blows up in his face, he’s so unprepared he actually _cries_.

She breaks up with him.

Out of nowhere, as far as he’s concerned, she breaks up with him. She sits him down at his shitty stained dinner table and she takes a deep breath and she says, “The thing is, I’ve met someone.” Just like that.

“ _I’m_ someone,” says Teddy stupidly. Eithne takes both of his hands and squeezes them tight.

“Look,” she tells him frankly, “I’m really sorry. I swear I haven’t cheated on you. But Fajr—I think I could really have something special with him. And I love you—I do, I really do—but…I don’t know that you think of this, _us_ , as really going somewhere. Really being long-term. But he does.”

“Fajr,” Teddy repeats, mind racing, until— “No fucking way! Your brother’s _best friend_ Fajr? The one I was so chummy with in India?”

Shuffling uncomfortably, Eithne nods. “I swear, _nothing’s_ happened between us. He told me how he felt about me while we were there, and I’ve just—I’ve really been considering my options. And I think….I just think I’ve got a better shot at real happiness with him. You know I—I _love_ you, Teddy, but I don’t know that you think of this as anything long term. I don’t—” she pauses here and then takes a deep breath and finishes, “I don’t think that you love me the way I’d like to be loved. And not being with you is easier than being with you and knowing that.”

The fight goes out of him when he hears that. Somehow, this whole time, he’d honestly thought that he was playing his part well. And that’s when he realises—it had been an act. Loving her, wanting to be with her, had been something he was trying to convince himself to do instead of falling into. It should have been the easiest thing and instead he was working at it every day. What does that make him, then? What kind of person is he if he could do that to her?

She leaves so quickly he hasn’t even got up from the table by the time she drops a kiss onto his cheek and his spare key onto the side and shuts the door behind herself.

And then, “Fuck,” announces Teddy to his empty apartment, and bursts into tears.

-

He doesn't know how long he stays in a fugue of self-loathing and despair. What he does know is that it is long enough to seriously concern people. This fact is made evident by Dominique and Young Molly turning up and breaking his door down to get him. Such is his misery that he doesn't even mind that he’s going to have to fix it yet again.

"Jesus," says Dominique as she arrives in the doorway to his bedroom. Her eyes sweep around the mess of dirty clothes and the sheet coming off the mattress and Teddy, bundled in his duvet, wan and hollow-cheeked. Behind her, Teddy can see Young Molly going back and forth across his messy sitting room. There's a bang as she throws open a window, and then another.

"Eithne broke up with me," Teddy tells her. His voice is hoarse, he's surprised to find.

"Yeah, no _shit_ ," Dominique retorts. She folds her arms. "Nobody's seen you in a fortnight. Young Molly made me come in case you were dead."

"Well," says Teddy, "I'm not."

There is a profound silence after this. In the sitting room, there's a faint crunch and then a horrified gasp from Young Molly, followed by several terse swearwords. Neither Dominique nor Teddy bother finding out what she's stepped on.

Finally, Dominique loses what little patience she has left.

"Okay," she announces firmly, "Here's what's going to happen. You are going to get out of bed and take a shower. That is absolutely the first thing you're doing. You reek. Then you are going to get dressed and eat something and then we are going to have a serious talk about your coping mechanisms."

"No," replies Teddy just as firmly. "I have no clean clothes to wear and everything in the fridge has gone off. Plus, I'm not hungry." Then he pulls his duvet over his head and disappears into the comfort of the warm, stinky darkness. He is not getting out of bed.

"For fuck's sake."

He hears Dominique say this, her voice muffled. There's a brief, indistinct conference between the two girls, and then his duvet is whipped off him. Teddy moans in despair. Young Molly and Dominique both make faces that communicate exactly how disgusted they are by the smell.

" _God_ ," says Young Molly with feeling. She at least has the grace to look pitying. Dominique, on the other hand, places her small hands around his left ankle, digs her nails in, and begins to haul him out of bed.

"No," whines Teddy, scrabbling at the wall for a handhold, "Leave me alone."

"Get a fucking grip, Lupin," Dominique warns as Young Molly grabs his other ankle, "This is pathetic. What are you, two years old? Fucking hell."

Teddy surrenders. He allows himself to be yanked unceremoniously out of bed. They let him flop bonelessly to the floor, apparently disinterested in the fact that this causes his elbows and head to bang quite hard against his floorboards. He lets out a groan of pain but otherwise doesn't complain.

They drop his legs once he's on the floor and there is another pause as they just watch him lie there, sprawled out and miserable.

"You didn't even _love_ her," bursts out Young Molly suddenly. She sounds overwrought. "You told Dom!"

"But she _left_ me," Teddy tells her, staring right up at the ceiling, "I was trying so hard and she _left_ me."

"You're a fucking baby," Dominique replies. She reaches down and grabs his t-shirt in both hands, beginning the tough process of hauling him to his feet. After a moment, Young Molly steps in to help.

In the end, they get him on his feet and in the shower by threatening to call Lily and/or Victoire to come help. He proceeds to stand under the hot water for nearly half an hour, reluctant to admit that he already feels more human, and then scrubs himself all over. This last he does because Dominique actually comes in and rips back the shower curtain, ignoring his yelp of protest, and tells him that if there is even a hint of stink on him when he comes out she's telling his grandmother on him.

(“Oh, come off it,” she huffs in disbelief as he frantically tries to cover himself with a shampoo bottle, “I’ve seen much better, don’t worry.”

“How?” he demands of her indignantly. It’s the sort of thing he wouldn’t mind hearing from a girl who’s known a lot of guys, but from Dominique, who’s known her whole life that she has no interest in seeing any man naked, it kind of stings.

She just smirks and charms a bottle of shower gel to smack him in the chest until he grabs it and uses it.)

By the time he comes out, the girls have opened every single window in his flat and managed to get the kitchen table mostly clear and clean. There are various charmed cleaning implements hard at work all around him. Their grandmother passed on many things to her grandchildren and an aptitude for household charms—despite being the least popular when being taught—is indubitably one of the best. He has to flick aside a purposeful sponge as it whips right at him, its attention focused on a beer stain that has somehow ended up on the wall.

A little while later, his stomach full of the first proper food he's eaten in about eleven days, Teddy is starting to feel like the fuzz is clearing out of his brain. He's feeling the reluctant stirrings of deep gratitude as he sits and stares across at the girls. They are staring back meaningfully.

"So," Dominique asks, cocking her head across at him, "You going to tell us why you decided to go all hermit-y on us?"

"She broke up with me," Teddy responds, tone short. "You _know_."

"Yeah, yeah," Dominique says, waving a hand to bat this fact away, "We _know_. James told us. She's moved on to some friend of her brother's."

"Fajr," Young Molly chips in, her hand creeping slowly across the table towards Teddy's like she's not even aware of it. "She's, like, such a bitch? To just dump you like that and go out with someone else straight away. We thought she, like, _loved_ you."

"She did," sighs Teddy, not moving his hand as her fingers close softly around it. There is something in him saying that he should, but frankly he doesn't want to. "But I—she knew I didn't love her. And she wanted someone who did."

Dominique kicks him, not gently, under the table.

"You've been a dick, you know that?"

Teddy turns outraged eyes on her. He needs _sympathy_ , not attack. Next to Dominique, Young Molly pokes her cousin in the arm.

"What?" demands Dominique of her cousin, smacking the poke away, "He _has_. Carrying on with her when he’s obvs got a boner for you. It was a total dick move, and we all knew it. If you'd pulled that shit on any of my friends," she continues, turning her attention away from Molly and back to Teddy, lifting a threatening finger, "I'd have hexed you into next week. It was totally selfish."

Teddy can't breathe. He can't look at Young Molly. His first instinct is to rebuff the point, but he's clinging onto some desperate hope that maybe Molly wasn't paying attention. It's happened plenty before, anyway. If he can just _catch a break_....

He is, for what feels like the first time in forever, lucky. Young Molly makes no comment about the boner thing. Instead, when she speaks up and he dares look at her, she's got her brow furrowed and her attention on him, not on her cousin's _bullshit_.

"Why has it made you so sad?" she wants to know, "If you didn't love her."

If it was Dominique asking, Teddy would have some sarcastic rebuttal on his tongue without even thinking. But this is _Molly_ , who makes everything gentler, and so he just gives her a slow shrug.

"I dunno," he says honestly, "I'm not into psychoanalysing. It just did."

"Hm," she says, and her fingers squeeze his just once.

Dominique clears her throat noisily, and Teddy moves his gaze towards her. He doesn’t remove his hand. Young Molly’s is soft and warm and tender and he has the sudden feeling that he might not want to let go for a very long time.

“So, Tedward,” Dominique says, pushing her short hair back behind one ear. Just like that, she has set his problems aside and moved onto juicier ones. “Would you care to be caught up on the latest family gossip?”

Teddy sits up straighter, leans forward, and puts on a breathily eager tone.

“Would I _ever_!”

Talking over each other, constantly interrupting, sharing jokes and then cracking up too much to finish the story, Dominique and Molly fill him in on what he’s missed. Which, for a two-week-window, is an irritating amount.

He discovers that Lily has been suspended from Hogwarts for getting caught giving Scorpius Malfoy a blowjob in what they had thought was an empty History of Magic classroom—“she told me they were only faking it!” he is obliged to interrupt with suitable levels of outrage. Young Molly gives a sympathetic shrug and replies, “I think, like, they were? I was talking to Lucy and she said Lily told her that they’re not actually going out but Lily wanted to learn how to do it and, like, Scorpius wasn’t going to say _no_ , you know? Boys are kind of pathetic about that.”—and that as a result Albus is no longer speaking to Scorpius and in fact has had to make peace with James despite having fallen out over the family FIFA tournament a few days beforehand so that they could corner him when he came to the Potter household and beat the crap out of him.

“Unfortunately,” Dominique sighs at this point, “Uncle Harry caught them before they could do much more than land a couple of punches and he sent Scorpius home and tried to ground them, except James doesn’t live at home anymore and Al just went back to Hogwarts.”

“Yeah,” Molly continues, “and now Al has declared, like, _war_ on Scorpius so Gryffindor is all divided between the two of them. That’s what Lucy says. She says all Hufflepuff thinks it’s hilarious. Rose is trying to stay neutral but she’s so pissed off with them for being jerks that a couple of days ago she stopped talking to both of them. She thinks Al is a twat for trying to control Lily’s love life but she also thinks Scorpius is a twat for taking advantage of Lily, even though she says Lily was really, probably, almost definitely not the one being taken advantage of, so she can’t really, like, pick a _side_ , you know?”

Teddy’s headache is starting to come back trying to keep up with it all. Honestly, he zones out for a single fortnight and every single Weasley alliance changes? It’s like living in the middle of a goddamn soap opera. He hates them all. He puts his head down on the table to prove it. Dominique and Young Molly ignore this completely in favour of continuing to babble away about all the drama.

They proceed to relate how Lily is due back to Hogwarts in two days and has been placed on so many warnings she’ll probably get expelled next time but that all her Slytherin cronies have been so busy stirring up the feud between Albus and Scorpius that the two boys are probably going to snap and get expelled before she does. Teddy can’t quite help the wave of awe and fear that visits him at that point. Honestly, he can’t help thinking that if Voldemort had had access to a group of girls like Lily’s little Slytherin Crew, the war might have gone very differently.

He then discovers that while all of this has been going on, Scorpius’ mother has been checked into rehab—“I mean,” Dominique interjects here, “Scorpius and his dad are saying she _chose_ to go, that’s what Rose says.” “No way,” Teddy replies, “You’ve got to admit you have a problem if you choose to go. Astoria just really, really loves wine.”—and apparently James’ friendship with Asta Nott has fallen apart because Astoria is her aunt and she can’t stand that James has picked the precise moment that Scorpius’ mother goes into rehab to start a vendetta against him.

“Asta’s, like, _terrifying_ ,” says Young Molly, wide-eyed, “But I kind of admire her? She’s really loyal.”

 Teddy’s first inclination is to snort, but Molly looks so sincere that he just nods in agreement. Maybe it's fair enough, after all. It is kind of a dick move to fuck with a guy who's facing the prospect of his mother being labelled an alcoholic in all social circles. Nobody deserves that kind of gossip.

“Anyway,” Dominique says airily, dragging his attention away, “I think that’s pretty much it. Oh, apart from Vic and that Ben guy. They went on holiday together a couple of days ago.”

“He _adores_ her,” Young Molly confirms breathlessly, looking bowled over by the fact, “We think he wants to _marry_ her.”

“Yikes,” replies Teddy with a grimace. Dominique levitates a fork threateningly into his face. Teddy clarifies hastily, leaning backwards, “About _marriage_ , not Victoire being married. Jesus, Dom.”

The fork retreats.

“Well,” says Dominique, like that hasn’t just happened, “I’d better go and find myself someone truly stunning in case the wedding happens and I need a plus one. There is no way I’m being outshone crumpet-wise by any of you losers.”

“No chance,” Teddy scoffs before his brain catches up with his mouth, “There’s no way you’ll find anyone prettier than Eirnin McLaggen.”

 Young Molly’s brow crumples down. “Who’d bring Eirnin McLaggen?”

“Oh,” says Teddy, hunching his shoulders in shame, “James hasn’t told you yet, then.”

x

By the time they go out for something to eat that evening Teddy has persuaded both girls not to let on that they know. He tries to get them to make an Unbreakable Vow about it—gets as far as having his hand wrapped around Molly’s again—before Dominique yanks their hands apart and reminds them, “We’re blanket-banned for life, remember? Feel free to be the one who picks a fight with Grandma Molly about it,” which stops Teddy in his tracks.

“We won’t _tell_ ,” promises Young Molly solemnly over her pizza, “But _oh my god_.”

Dominique is looking as close to ecstatic as Teddy has ever seen her. She’s got a piece of pizza in one hand but she seems to have forgotten about it.

“I’ve finally got company for Pride,” she says in total delight, “No more dragging you ‘straight ally’ fuckers along. Real, actual company.”

She takes a bite of pizza big enough to choke her and chews it beatifically.

“Don’t _ask_ him,” Teddy orders desperately, “I’m not supposed to have told you, remember?”

Dominique just huffs and then swallows.

It takes until the next day before Teddy realises that she’s feeling hurt underneath all the delight. He isn’t exactly sure how to tackle it, since feelings have never really been a him-and-Dom thing. It’s fine with Young Molly, who can get most people to spill their emotions without any effort at all, but he and Dominique have always had a relationship that revolves mostly around banter and the odd bout of light physical violence. He loves her, definitely, but that love isn’t the kind of love that lends itself to expression in any way other than allowing her to pinch his things and take over his space with only minimal resentment.

He bucks up and does it anyway. He feels it is high time he gets his life in order, and dealing with emotions in a constructive way is probably a good place to start. Especially if they're somebody else's emotions.

However, being a Proper Adult does not extend to all things. It occurs to him as he's preparing to apparate out of the alley just down the road from his place that Dominique probably still hasn't got around to warding her flat, and it occurs two seconds later that it would be fucking hilarious to scare the heeby-jeebies out of her.

So he pulls his phone out of his pocket, sets it to its loudest, and finds the best death metal song possible on Spotify. He's delighted to discover that the extra galleon a month he pays for magical upgrades is well worth it, since the song plays the whole time he's experiencing that uncomfortable squeezy-tube apparition feeling and blares out as solid as ever right as he appears on Dominique's hearth rug.

Dominique screams and throws herself sideways on the sofa. Actually screams, hands clutched to her chest, eyes wild and wide, her whole body curling up in a split second of terror.

Teddy falls over he's laughing so hard.

"You....fucking....asshole...." Dominique gasps, still pressing her hands against her heart, her entire face stark white.

"Gotcha," Teddy says smugly. Luckily for him, Dom is too consumed with adrenaline to do much other than sit on the sofa opening and closing her mouth like a fish. If not, he'd almost certainly be dead.

He makes two cups of tea entirely by hand as an apology and gives her one as he sits down on the sofa. She refuses to talk to him until she's drunk the entire mug, and then until he gets up and makes her another one. He uses magic to boil the water this time around. Waiting for the kettle a second time is just one step too far.

"So," he says eventually. She's got half her second cup of tea left and she's kicked her legs up into his lap, which is the closest to forgiveness she'll get.

She looks over at him and raises one eyebrow. She prompts, "So?"

"I think you're mad about the James thing," he says, before his nerve can desert him, "And I can't figure out why, but I thought I should ask about it anyway. In case we can fix it before it gets too big."

Instead of screaming at him, Dominique blows out a big sigh through her lips and looks away. There is a long silence. Remembering Young Molly's advice from about six years ago, Teddy doesn't push it. Instead he just sits, resting one hand on the bridge of her left foot, and waits.

It occurs to him then that it might be a bit sad that he can remember almost everything Molly has said to him so easily.

Maybe not, though—his patience pays off.

"It's dumb," Dominique mutters, taking another slurp of tea, "And selfish. Not as dumb as you outing him to us, but...more selfish than that."

Teddy doesn't contest the dumb thing. He knows it was dumb. Worse than dumb, actually.

Instead he prompts, "Tell me," his voice as gentle as he knows how to make it.

Dominique gesticulates wildly, nearly slopping tea all over herself.

"It's just!" She exclaims helplessly, "It's just stupid. But this whole time—you know, this whole time, I thought it was just me? And I know that's daft, and I love this family, and nobody's ever been nasty about me being gay _ever_ , but...you know, he let me think it was just me the whole time? Like nobody got it, to be just a little bit on the outside. Like I was just...alone."

He can see tears filling her eyes but he doesn't point it out. Crying is something that makes Dominique nearly apoplectic with anger, her own body betraying her at a crucial moment, and he doesn't really feel like having his head taken off when he's managed to coax this confession out of her. When he has the chance to head a genuine fight off at the pass.

Teddy takes a moment to think it through. He wants to think of something to say that will magically help, but all he can think about is Dominique's hurt and James' fear, and how it must have cut Dominique deeply if she's willing to talk to him about it.

Eventually, slowly, he says, "I think...I don't think that's stupid. I mean, I don't know what that's like. And you make it look easy, but it can't be. But I also think that—I think James is a lot more frightened than he lets on. Like, he's got this whole thing about playing the cool guy, right? Being effortless and unafraid. But he tries so hard. He tries all the time. And with his stupid jacket, and his tattoos, and everything—he's put all this effort into maintaining a certain image, and he feels like—"

"What, like being bi would ruin his image? For fuck's sake, Teddy," Dominique growls, her eyes suspiciously red, her voice thicker than he's ever heard it.

"No, no, fuck no," Teddy hurries in, "I don't think it's about his sexuality at all—well, I mean maybe a bit, because it isn’t easy. But with this…I think it's about Eirnin."

This gives Dominique pause.

"Explain," she says, her voice very calm.

"I think he like...I mean I think he really _likes_ him. I've never seen him stick out a relationship for longer than two months but this one—he fucking went on holiday with him, Dom. He met his _family_."

"Hasn't bothered introducing him to ours, though, has he?" Dom demands, voice thickening again. "It's like he's ashamed of us. Or of himself. I'm not sure which I'd be crosser about."

"Not everybody is brave the way you are, Dom," Teddy says softly. "Harry's kids—it's harder for them than anybody. All that press attention. I think they've gone out of their way to construct themselves the way they want to be seen, and it frightens them to deviate from that. Like, so long as they stick to these archetypes people will forget to compare them to their dad. I think they think it's better to be thought of as useless and rebellious than as trying to be good and failing. And to be bad you've got to be—invulnerable. And I think James feels vulnerable about Eirnin. I think that's why he's been hiding this thing."

There is a long, long silence after this. Teddy wants to say more, to try to clarify his words better, to try to convey the depth of love and fear he has for all three Potters, but he's worried about muddying it all. So he just sits and waits for Dominique to sort through it.

She springs into action unexpectedly. Downing her tea, she places her mug on the coffee table and then sits up and pries his out of his hands. Then she leans into him, hard and unapologetic, and wraps her arms around his middle. Teddy lets her. He circles her shoulders with his arms and tucks his cheek against the top of her sleek red head and he just lets her get comfortable in the hug. He can't remember the last time Dom initiated a hug when she wasn't drunk. In fact, at any time other than when she was cold in his flat after a night out and snuggled up in bed.

Dominique doesn't like to be vulnerable either. That's the comparison he could have drawn and didn't. She's strongly against being analysed. But even seeking out an embrace for comfort from anyone but Young Molly is a step too far for her, and he's oddly pleased at the thought that she's gone for it with him.

"I know it's sappy," he murmurs against the top of her head, "So don't hit me. But I love you, you know? You're kind of the best."

He feels her grin against his chest and she squeezes just a little tighter.

"You fucking sop," she tells him, tucking tighter into the hug. There is a brief silence, and then, "But I guess you're kind of the best too."

They sit like that for ages. It's the most comfortable Teddy's felt in a good while. Dominique's weight sprawled into him, the faint smell of her hair—just a little hint of that elderflower scent that points to the tiny bit of Veela in her—and the knowledge that he's helped to unpick some of her resentment is enough to wrap him up in happiness. The only thing that could make it better would be Young Molly cocooned in the hug too, the two girls he loves best right here.


	6. Chapter Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is so late, I am so sorry. I've been finishing off and redrafting my YA manuscript which will (eek!) be part of an anthology launched at the beginning of May.
> 
> Anyway, here is another chapter which involves Teddy being responsible (it's a surprise to him too).
> 
> TWs for underage pregnancy and discussion about getting an abortion.

Teddy has decided to get his life together.

Naturally, he goes to Harry for advice. He’s been stewing for a couple of weeks and thinks it is high time to just do _something._

"I know you're busy," he says, sticking his head through his godfather's study door, "So I won't be long. But the thing is, I really need some advice."

Harry looks up from his stack of papers. He looks overworked and exhausted, and Teddy is pretty sure there's more grey in his hair in even the month since they last saw each other.

"Okay," he says, gesturing at Teddy to come in. "Grab a seat."

Since all the seats are covered in books and files and maps and fuck knows what else, Teddy pulls out his wand and conjures up a chair instead. It's sort of lopsided, but it doesn't give when he sits down gingerly on it, so there's that.

Harry pushes his glasses up onto his forehead and rubs at the bridge of his nose.

"Right," he says, pulling his glasses back down, "Shoot."

Gazing at his godfather, Teddy makes a very fast decision. Having actually given positive advice to Dominique, he's feeling like maybe he is alright at the whole confidant thing, and therefore feels justified in saying what he does next.

"Well, I came here for advice. But also I think you should quit your job."

Very carefully, Harry props his elbows up on his desk.

"Okay," he says wearily. "We'll start with the first thing."

"Actually, can we go for the second?" Teddy replies, ignoring Harry's startled look. Teddy's always been easy-going and keen to please, and he can't actually remember a time he outright disagreed with his godfather. Sure, he's done a lot of things Harry would disagree _with_ , but he's always waited until he was away from his godfather to do it.

Before Harry can say yes or no, Teddy barrels on determinedly, "You look miserable. No offence. I mean really miserable. You work all day every day and all that happens is the Ministry complains that you're overstepping your bounds and the bloody Prophet asks if you can ever measure up to what you did in the War—which is bullshit, by the way, like how could you ever do anything like that again? Why should you have to? And, anyway," he continues, because he's in this thing properly now, "I don't think it's ever made you happy. I can't remember you ever being anything except stressed about it."

Harry steeples his fingers together. His eyes, exhausted and bloodshot, fix on Teddy with an intensity that unsettles him. "So, if you've got all the answers, what should I do? Quit? I _like_ the job, Teddy. Bringing the young Aurors up, watching them succeed...I love that."

It comes to Teddy in a rush. He actually thinks he hears a lightbulb ding into place above his head.

"Yes," he says firmly. "I think you should quit, and I think you should go and teach at Hogwarts."

Harry looks actually dumbfounded by this, so Teddy seizes his opportunity and ploughs on.

"It's the same thing, right? Guiding and teaching. All the good stuff about being an auror without the bad stuff. And you'd be good at it. You've got probably the best experience with Defence in the world, so the syllabus would be a doddle. And didn't you do the whole Dumbledore's Army thing? You already know you can teach. Plus it would, like, _normalise_ you, you know? Like, no kid's going to be hero-worshipping you if you've just set them three feet of essay on Hinkypunks."

Harry has started looking at him with an expression he's not sure about. It's still focused and sharp, but there's a horrible kind of longing in it. A reaching for that dream.

"There's already a Defence teacher," Harry says at last, starting to close down. Teddy sees it travel through him; the second he starts to snap down on the hunger inside him.

Teddy lets out a huff of derision. "Who, Ackerly? Excuse my language, Harry, but fuck that guy. He doesn't know a vampire from a werewolf, and he's old enough to have known probably _Dumbledore_ as a kid."

Harry looks faintly pained at the swearing, but he's also got something in him that's lighter than Teddy's seen in...well, at the very least months.

"Plus," Teddy says, reaching for the most compelling argument yet, "Just think what a good eye you could keep on Lily if you were at Hogwarts. No more of this bl—I mean, you know, bad behaviour."

Harry almost looks like he might end the conversation at that reminder of his daughter's transgression, but instead—suddenly, impossibly—he starts to laugh.

"Yes," he says, between chuckles, "I suppose there's that."

Teddy waits for him to stop laughing before he adds, "Look, I'm not saying chuck everything in and quit tomorrow. But talk to Ginny about it. Talk to Neville, definitely, he can give you good advice. Even Professor Macmillan—wasn't she in your year at school? It's early yet, you've got a few months to wind things down at the Ministry and move. You could start in September, after Al leaves."

Harry is just looking at him. Looking at him like he's never quite seen him before.

"Lord, Teddy," he says wonderingly, "When did you get so wise?"

Teddy shuffles awkwardly in his seat. He wouldn't call it wisdom, exactly. More like common sense.

"I just—" he begins, but Harry cuts him off.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to embarrass you. You just—you just reminded me of your dad just then. I keep forgetting...I forget you're an adult, you know? I spent so long watching you grow up and I should have...I don't know, seen it, I guess. How much you're like him in so many ways."

Teddy feels something swell in his chest.

"Well," he replies gruffly, "Thanks. Can we talk about the mess that is my life now, please?"

Harry laughs and holds both hands up in surrender. "Right. Sorry. Fire away."

“Okay, right, so, the thing is—I think that maybe I like Molly. I mean, _like_ like. In maybe a proper, big-and-scary way. And I haven’t been thinking about it because it could screw up everything. She’s one of my best friends in the whole world. And I don’t want that to change. Or for my friendship with Dom to get weird ‘cause of it.

"And it's super easy to say it won't change at all," Teddy announces at this point, "But it would. It always does. Look at Al and Scorpius, you know? That was, like, a true friendship and it's all messed up now because of love and Lily. Or, you know, lust, or whatever." Harry's starting to look faintly pained, so Teddy hurries on, "And I love Dom so much. She's a nightmare but I never want to cause her harm. But I…I really think I feel a lot about Young Molly."

Harry gives this some thought.

"Does she know?"

“Dunno. Probably. Dom will have figured it out, and she’ll tell her.”

"Well, I'm not sure Dominique should do that. I can talk to her—"

"Much as I’d love to see that, I don’t think there’s much point," Teddy says. "I'm not very good at subtlety so Molly’ll figure it out herself in the end. Also, I told them about Ja—well, this other romantic drama thing that wasn't mine to tell. So fair's fair. Why are you smiling?"

Because Harry is, he's grinning ear-to-ear. Teddy smiles back because he can't help it, that's a smile that's always invited reciprocity.

"James told us," he announces proudly, for all the world acting like James has just laid his first born grandson in his arms, "He introduced us to Eirnin two days ago."

Teddy doesn't know what question to ask first.

When he says, "Why?" he curses himself. That wasn't at all the question he meant to ask.

"Well, we _are_ his parents," replies Harry, pretending to get sniffy. But then he relents, that grin still sparking, "He says he spoke to Dominique, and she made him...well, I don't know the exact details. But she persuaded him it wasn't a bad thing, to really care about somebody. To admit that you care."

Teddy can't help it. He returns the smile again, broader than before. "And you like him? Eirnin?"

Harry gives a shrug. "From what I know of him. Polite kid. I'm not sure about the Catholic thing, but it'll probably be good for James to be around somebody with a clear sense of right and wrong for a change. Also," he adds, his eyes suddenly glittering with wicked, wicked humour, "It nearly gave Ron a coronary, hearing that I've got a kid involved with one of Cormac McLaggen's brood. Hermione couldn't stop laughing. I think it's almost as bad as Albus and Rose being friends with Scorpius. You and Eithne was less...immediate, I guess. But now he's faced with the very real possibility of bumping into Cormac at family events."

Teddy raises an eyebrow.

"You think it's that serious? Him and James? I mean, I know James likes him, but Eirnin—"

Harry interrupts firmly, "I have never seen my son look at anyone the way he looks at that boy. And if I'm any judge of character, Eirnin's at least as far gone. He looks at James the way Ron used to look at Hermione. The way Ron still does, sometimes, actually. Sort of bewildered, but blissful at the same time."

Teddy sits and digests that for a minute. Before he can contribute any further, Harry pushes his glasses back up his nose. "As for _your_ issues, kiddo, I think I'm as helpless as you are. We'd better call in reinforcements."

He leaves the room and returns with four cups of tea, his wife, and his daughter.

"I thought you were at Hogwarts?" Teddy asks as Lily shuffles in and plonks herself into his lap, winding into his embrace like a cat.

"I'm being homeschooled for the rest of the year," she announces, wrapping one skinny arm around his neck. "Mum and Dad think I'm going off the rails."

"Oh, you're well off them by now," Ginny corrects with an air of resigned acceptance, offering Teddy a biscuit off her horrendously flower-patterned plate and then neatly spelling a pile of Harry's papers off a chair and claiming it. "At least this way we can monitor the wreckage."

"Well, we're not talking about Lily now," Harry says firmly. The _now_ sounds an awful lot like he meant to say _again_ , and changed it at the last minute. "Teddy has romantic problems, and we are here to help. Aren't we?"

He raises an eyebrow at his daughter. Lily gives this mischievous little wriggle, but she does nod. Holding back laughter, Teddy wraps his arms around her like he used to when she was four and snuck into his lap to watch films.

"I think it's terribly sweet," announces Ginny, ignoring the gentle kick her husband gives her on the ankle. "I know you don't like being called sweet, Teddy, but it is. I think you'd be very good for her."

"Oh yeah," replies Lily scathingly, "He's got so much to offer. No job, no direction, a flat colder than the _Antarctic tundra_...."

"What's wrong with the Antarctic?" Teddy asks indignantly.

"No polar bears," parries Lily without hesitation, and reaches for another biscuit.

"Well," says Ginny, trying to be fair, but Harry holds up a finger.

"Sadly, I think she's right," he interjects, then points the finger at Lily, "But don't get too smug about it. Now, Teddy, you want to take this seriously, yes? With Young Molly?”

Slightly embarrassed, Teddy nods. It's more of a duck of the head, but it does the trick.

"Right, well, your history with Victoire makes it trickier than it would otherwise be. I mean, I know you two are friends now, but it did end rather messily."

" _She_ dumped _me_ ," Teddy feels obliged to point out, "I mean, it's not like I've dumped her and am moving onto her cousin, you know? That would be terrible, but it's—I mean, it's been six years."

"Still happened," points out Lily from Teddy's lap, nibbling on her biscuit. He jiggles his knee to dislodge her, but she just tightens the arm around his neck and cranes her head to grin at him.

"I think," Ginny says slowly, "That Victoire will be okay with it. But I think you should make sure you tell her first, before anyone. Show her that respect."

"Do it soon, too," Lily adds, "She's so loved up with Beautiful Ben she probably won't mind as much. They're _so_ happy right now." She abruptly leans into Teddy's ear and whispers, "She's totally up the duff. Don't tell Mum and Dad," then sways back and drops him a wink.

Teddy blinks at her, and then decides to process that nugget of information later. Now is not the moment.

"Anyway," he says in a slightly strangled tone, "Victoire's not the only thing. I don't think Percy likes me much because of the thing with Lucy and the aliens, you know? And the Founder's Tower."

Ginny goes off into peals of laughter. Even Harry looks like he's having to hold back a grin.

"She was eleven," he reassures Teddy, "I'm sure Percy's over it by now."

"Nah," Lily counters, not even bothering to hide her smirk, "She just told him about applying to uni for astrophysics. She says she wants to be an astronaut. I spoke to Rose after she did it and apparently Uncle Percy looked like he was going to have a coronary right there."

"Well, astrophysics is very impressive," Harry tries to argue, but Lily just laughs.

"Yeah, but she also said she's only doing it because she thinks it'll be easier for aliens to abduct her if she's in space. She's convinced that's what happened to at least one of the Lost Cosmonauts, and that's why the Russians covered it up."

"Who? What?" asks Ginny helplessly. Harry has put his head in his hands. His shoulders are shaking with laughter.

"Also," Lily continues, clearly delighted to have elicited such a reaction, "She had an argument with him about the Founders conspiracy again only, like, two weeks ago. She used that _Hogwarts: Whose History?_ book Teddy gave her to back her up. She's memorised at least eighty pages of it."

"I gave that to her _years_ ago," Teddy protests, but he's starting to laugh too. The problem is that encouraging Lucy in all her conspiracy theories had been funny when she was just a kid, and unfortunately had only got funnier the older she got and the more seriously she took them. There's nothing like a really good debate about whether the four Founders even existed to get conversation going over a family dinner.

"Well, Teddy," says Ginny, shooting him a sympathetic look over her mug of tea, "I think you might have to give up on getting Percy's approval for now. But you can at least get a job, so you're not going to Molly with nothing but what your parents left you and a hopeful attitude."

"My parents left me quite a bit," Teddy points out. Not as much as his grandmother will end up leaving him, but enough that not working thus far along with paying rent hasn't given him cause for concern. "Plus there's the Ministry payouts, you know. War orphan and all that."

"I'm not having you living off benefits," Ginny says firmly, for all the world as though she's his real mother, "And I can already imagine what Percy will say if that's what you propose supporting Young Molly off. You know what he's like about _earning_ things."

"Young Moll's got her own job," Teddy points out, "She's perfectly capable of supporting herself. God, what is this, the eighteen hundreds? Why are we even talking about supporting each other? I’m not even precisely sure how I _feel_ about her yet."

"Teddy, come on," says Harry, "You can't shirk responsibility forever. You could do something amazing with your life."

"So could you," replies Teddy meaningfully, fixing his godfather with his most firm stare, "You could mould _hundreds of minds_..."

Ginny and Lily both turn to look at Harry. He narrows his eyes at Teddy, but bows under the weight of their expectant stares.

"Teddy," he says, grinning suddenly and unexpectedly, "Has suggested I quit the Auror department and take over the Defence position at Hogwarts. Ackerly will probably be retiring this year, so...Teddy made some good points. I think it's worth considering."

A long silence greets this. And then Ginny makes a funny noise, sort of relieved and disbelieving and proud all at once, and gets up to circle the desk and plant a huge, smacking kiss on the top of Teddy's head.

"That's a really good idea, Ted," says Lily sincerely, exchanging a smile with her mother, "I mean, like, _really_ good."

"Alright," he replies, unable to help grinning, "No need to sound so surprised. I'm not just a pretty face, you know."

"No," says Harry, "You're not. Which is why I'll do you a deal. I'll apply for the Defence position if you go and speak to a guy I know at Flourish and Blott's. He's working to publish new textbooks for Hogwarts—more accessible, you know? Younger. They've been using the same books since the 1910s. He wants an illustrator."

"This is blackmail," grumps Teddy, even though the little lightbulb over his head has started flashing insistently in recognition of a truly good idea. "You'd be really good at teaching, and I'll probably be a terrible illustrator."

"No," say Ginny and Lily at the same time. Lily carries on breathlessly, "You'd be so good, and he loves your style. Al and I showed him your sketchbook, he's been asking Dad to ask you since at least Christmas!"

"You little horror," Teddy tells her, and then squeezes her into the tightest hug he can manage. She shrieks and wriggles to get away, but she does plant an embarrassed kiss on his cheek before he releases her completely.

"So," says Harry, looking lighter than Teddy thought possible, "Do we have a deal?"

Teddy looks between the three of them—so expectant, so hopeful and pleased. And before he can think twice he says, "Ah, god, _fine_. We have a deal."

Harry stands up and moves around his desk to shake Teddy's hand, sealing the deal. And then he suddenly pulls Teddy into a hug, slapping him roughly on the back. It still surprises Teddy, somehow, that he's taller than him, though he passed him in height when he was eighteen. It feels wrong. But it's also incredibly nice to be back in that familiar hug—one that was offered, without hesitation or second guessing, from when he was a small child until he turned thirteen and embarrassed to be hugged by his godfather. So he returns the embrace, rough and true, and mutters a quiet, "Thank you," before Harry pulls away.

"Okay," Ginny says once they have parted, "Right, now that's settled—Teddy, you can practice Hiccoughing Hexes with Lily."

" _Yes_ ," exclaims Lily in delight, right as Teddy wails, "No!"

 

*

 

It's nine days later when Teddy finally meets the editor. He's still plagued by occasional bouts of hiccoughs, which Lily _insisted_ was an accident, but is soldiering on regardless.

He's made this completely lame vow to himself—he's not going to even think about Young Molly in any other way than a friend until he has his life together enough to get the Potters' approval. He went apartment-hunting the three days before, dragging James along with him since James is all _domestic_ now, and knows shit like making sure you've got a fridge big enough to fit healthy food for two in, and also a shower big enough to have sex in comfortably if you're so inclined. (James turned two flats down right off the bat without explaining this particular requirement. Teddy still regrets asking, since the answer he got was so excruciatingly detailed he can't stop thinking about it every time he uses the loo at James and Eirnin's place.)

They saw one yesterday that even James couldn't find much wrong with. It's airy and spacious, and located on the top floor of a building filled with older witches and wizards who all came out to meet James and Teddy and clucked over them and called them "ducks". James had pretended to vomit as soon as they were safely inside, but all Teddy could see was a really good incentive to never have to invite anybody over for a party. Not that he doesn't _like_ parties, obviously, but throwing them is such a bother. This way he'll be able to go to loads without anybody ever expecting him to put one on in return.

There's plenty of cupboard space—more than enough for his clothes, plus lots of room for things like cereal and…like, other grown-up stuff in the kitchen.

He thinks he's going to take it. It'll eat into almost all the money his parents left him, but if this job works out...maybe that would be okay.

He's feeling more stressed than he'd care to admit as he waits for the man to come out and get him. He's got an old jacket of Harry's on, actual fucking _tweed_ , since it was the only thing that stretched across his shoulders without needing more alteration spells than Ginny was capable of and since he hasn't owned a smart jacket of his own since he was sixteen. Lily took charge and dressed him, hence the white shirt and neatly ironed olive sweater and chinos and oxfords and...well, the air of a guy destined to work a sensible job and marry a sensible wife and have sensible children and generally do nothing very exciting with his life at all ever.

As a look, Teddy doesn't actually mind it that much. He could do without the handkerchief Lily folded into his pocket, but she insisted it brought the whole ensemble together, and Teddy had been too distracted to properly argue.

Finally, the editor—Terry Boot, an old classmate of Harry's—comes out of his office at a near-run, apologising profusely for keeping Teddy waiting. They take a walk around the building, a big extension on the upstairs of Flourish and Blott's full of hipster interns and shiny interior design. There are clear plastic tubes criss-crossing over everyone’s heads and running down the walls full of what look like green and yellow striped Bumble Bees, buzzing along with supreme purpose.

It's as different from the fusty bookstore downstairs as you could imagine. Teddy feels uneasily out of place as they wander around.

"I know," says Terry as he draws Teddy into his office and offers him a seat, "It's kind of hellish. The new boss is all about sustainability and _moving with the times_. Hence the Merlin-damned Barkbees. You saw all the plastic runs? Like anybody wants to watch those things flying around in the walls. It's bad enough they combust spontaneously without having to worry they'll break out and start drilling into our desks thinking there's sap to eat in them."

"I hear it's really good for the environment," Teddy tries, but the note of earnestness in his own voice threatens to send him into a fit of horrified laughter so he shuts up fast. Terry nods, like shutting up was a really good idea, and then produces Teddy's old sketchbook from an overflowing drawer in his desk.

"So here's the deal," he announces, flicking open the book with an air that suggests he has perused it intently and repeatedly. "Your artistry is exactly the kind I want. Your drawings are simple but you capture movement really well. Like this one," he says, tapping a sketch Teddy did of Dominique months ago, her hair blowing into her face and her laughing mouth half-hidden as she reaches up to push her fringe out of her eyes. Terry glances up, "I take it you can find models? We'll need drawings of the traditional wand movements for every spell in the Hogwarts syllabus up to OWL level, so kids have got a visual aid. I want to do NEWT books as well, but we're focusing on the OWLs to start."

"May I?" asks Teddy, reaching to pull the book towards him. Terry inclines his head in agreement, and Teddy hurries through the pages to find the spread he's got of Lily doing cartwheels in the Potters' back garden last summer, pigtails akimbo and expression wild. Teddy holds the book up to show Andrew. "Lily'd probably model. She's got a good wand technique, for all that she pretends not to, and she'll be going into her OWL year next year so she's learning a lot of these spells anyway."

Terry pauses and frowns.

"You think having Harry's kid might not distract?"

"I mean, probably," Teddy admits, putting the book back down on the table, "But it might help, too. You know, the fame thing? People care about what famous people are doing, so while the Potters are still in the public eye having Lily in the textbooks might make people more inclined to buy them. I’ll rough them out, anyway, change her face around a bit. But you can let it slip that she modelled, and people’ll line up."

Terry narrows his eyes over at Teddy. He gets the feeling he's being assessed anew—perhaps analysed less as a floozy, flaky artist and more as somebody who might have a crumb of sense.

Finally, Terry gives this jerky nod, like he's made a decision.

"Alright," he announces, "We'll give it a go. Start with the Defence book. If Harry's really going to take the post next year we'll want to get it out as soon as possible, he'll have the clout to change the syllabus. And once we've got one book in it'll be four times easier to get the rest. The writing's almost done, so I can give you a list of the spells we need illustrated."

And he does, pulling a roll of parchment out of another drawer and handing it over.

"Jesus," says Teddy, half in admiration, "I haven't seen anybody write on parchment since Hogwarts. Don't you have a computer?"

Terry narrows his eyes. "Why would I need a computer?"

"Oh, no reason," says Teddy lightly, his heart sinking as he examines the messy, inky cursive in his hands and mentally comparing it to the nice, legible writing produced by a simple printer.

"We'll say a 7,000 galleon advance on this first book," Terry announces now, pulling a contract out from under a stack of other papers on his desk and pushing it towards Teddy, "Half as soon as you sign, and the other half on deliverance. Plus four percent of royalties, how does that sound?"

"Um," says Teddy, still trying to wrap his head around 7,000 galleons.

"Obviously the advance will increase for the next books if this first one does well," Terry carries on, glancing up to glare as an offensively aggressive Barkbee crashes its way along the plastic tube that passes the length of his office ceiling, "But I think 7,000 is fairly reasonable given you've not got any other illustrative credits to your name."

"Um," says Teddy again, then coughs and swallows, "Yeah, I reckon so. I should probably look the contract over though, you know? Gotta be careful and all that. Not that I don't trust you," he adds with a nervous laugh, and then hiccoughs loudly. "Ah, shit, sorry. Shit! I didn't mean to swear."

Terry stays quiet for a minute, and then suddenly bursts out laughing.

"Merlin, I can see Tonks in you. She was a really good friend of my sister's, you know? You're just...you remind me of her."

"Oh," says Teddy, fumbling for the appropriate response, "Wow, thank you." Hiccoughing again, he ploughs on, "I mean, most people say I remind them of my dad more."

"Something in your bearing, yeah," replies Terry thoughtfully, looking him over, "The way you hunch your shoulders in—I remember Lupin doing that. But your laugh...that's all her."

"Thanks," is all Teddy can think of to say to that.

Later, on his way home, contract clutched under one arm, it hits him. He has a job. A contract. Maybe, like, a _career_. The thought stops him. He, Teddy Lupin, has a career. Holy _fuck_.

Hiccoughing absently, he pulls out his phone. Proudly, he props his contract up on a garden wall and then sends a snapchat of it to Lily, Dominique, and Young Molly. He gets one back almost instantly of Lily, dancing around her bedroom with both thumbs up and the clear sound of her father laughing behind the camera. One comes in from Molly two minutes later, both thumbs up and a huge grin on her face.

He doesn't hear anything back from Dominique until a couple of hours later, and then it's just a video of her dinner, so he ignores it.

To make the final decision on the flat, he asks his grandmother to come and look around it with him. She has her lips pursed the whole way around and she doesn't seem to be taking in anything the young witch showing them is saying.

Teddy, who has heard the patter about _perfect ceiling height_ and _south-facing_ and _calm area_ already, mostly just scrutinises his nan for any sign that she loves it or hates it. The mouth isn't much of a tell; she does it when she likes something just to throw people off.

Finally, they’re back down at street level and the property witch has left and Teddy absolutely cannot wait so he turns to his nan and rests a hand on her arm and he says, “So?”

She stops and looks very seriously at him. Unnerved, Teddy draws his hand back hastily.

“I think,” she tells him after a long, long pause, “That it’s lovely. A grown-up home at last.”

Teddy’s so taken aback that he forgets to say thanks. He just stands there, mouthing like a fish.

“Not too cold? Too warm? Nothing wrong with the kitchen, or the bedroom’s too big, or—”

“Teddy,” she interrupts. She lays a hand on him this time, reaching high to squeeze his chin between her fingers and give his head a gentle shake. “Darling, if you like it, I like it. Those monstrous cabinets will be easy to fix, anyway.”

Teddy looks down at her. His heart squeezes with love and gratitude and before he can let the fear of disappointed eyebrows get at him he bends down and pulls her into a big, tight hug. She bats at him ineffectually, handbag flying, but she’s smiling by the time he lets her escape.

“Daft child,” she tells him, adjusting her grey perm.

“Love you, Nan,” is the only reply he gives. When he sneaks a glance a second later, she’s smiling to herself as she searches through her handbag for her lipstick.

 

*

 

He moves in exactly one month later. He gives his nan an afternoon of freedom in the place the day before to change anything she considers unsuitable, and he drops in to find her ordering Harry and Hermione about like they’re six year olds.

“Bit of a stuffy one, that Weasley, but she’s got the best wand technique I’ve seen since Narcissa,” his nan confides to him from the safety of the kitchen while Harry and Hermione concentrate on adjusting the height of the sitting room ceiling.

Ron joins them not long later, and is sensibly banished to join Teddy in hunting out a decent sofa. Teddy had pointed out that his old one was still plenty comfy, but he’d been outvoted because three of its legs were missing and he was propping it up on bricks and a couple of old textbooks.

It’s not too much of a hardship to go sofa shopping. Teddy likes Ron. He’s always liked Ron. He’s wonderfully blunt, and he has never seemed to mind that Teddy doesn’t have grand aspirations. They end up in a pub dissecting Lily’s behaviour over pints instead of browsing sofas, and have to rush to buy one completely at random on the way home and pretend that they spent hours on the search.

“Look,” Teddy announces proudly, holding up the picture on his phone, having to lean on Ron maybe slightly more than is normal, “Isn’t it nice?”

There is a meaningful silence from the rest of the room.

“Teddy,” Harry begins, but Hermione just can’t bear it.

“Oh, _boys_ ,” she says helplessly, “Why is it neon orange?”

“Is it?” asks Ron in surprise.

“It matched Ron’s hair,” Teddy answers, changing his own to look the same. He and Ron take one glance at each other and dissolve into laughter.

Harry is clearly hiding a smile behind his hand. Hermione has a look that says she wants to, but it’s warring with her sensible demeanour. Teddy’s nan is the only one looking like she’s got a hold on the situation.

“It’s fine,” she interrupts at last, “We can change the colour when it gets here. Now go home, the lot of you. Moving day starts early.”

 

*

 

It’s a lot less dramatic than Teddy expected. Ginny takes the day off work to come help, and Dominique, Young Molly and Victoire turn up to lend a hand as well. They bring a hungover Louis, who’s pleaded sick to avoid Quidditch training with the Arrows, but sensibly Ginny sends him off to occupy Lily. She’s already managed to somehow fuck up one of Teddy’s attempts to turn his sofa a less heinous colour.

He’d been going for a nice neutral grey. It’s now somewhere in between puke-brown and lime-green, and looks much more ghastly than when they started.

“You’re not even allowed to do magic outside of Hogwarts,” Teddy complains to her as Louis tries to hustle her out of the door.

“I didn’t,” she promises, ducking under Louis’ arm and shooting finger guns at him.

“For God’s sake,” says Louis, and grabs her around the middle so he can remove her before she does any more damage. Teddy’s expecting to hear her swearing all the way down the stairs, and it’s almost more worrying that she goes in apparent compliance.

“Don’t worry,” Victoire reassures him, laying a brief hand on his arm, “Dom and I can fix the sofa.”

And they do, somehow. Side by side, their wands moving in perfect synchronisation, you’d never guess they fight as much as they get along. In profile they’re incriminatingly similar, the same long nose and angular jawlines.

By the time they’re done the sofa is a boring but inoffensive soft beige and the rest of the flat is starting to come together. Young Molly has taken charge of the kitchen with an air of supreme purpose. Teddy thinks she might even be colour-coordinating his selection of liquors.

“Hey,” announces Lily from the doorway when she comes back at around 5pm, “This doesn’t look half bad.”

Louis follows her in. He looks like he’s been run over by a bus—hair awry, expression helpless. He flops onto the sofa, boneless, and clutches a pillow protectively to his middle.

 “Don’t worry,” Lily promises as Victoire moves, looking slightly concerned, towards her brother. She’s started to poke her way through Teddy’s bookshelves, her mother’s cautious eye on her. “He’s kept me _very_ entertained.”

There is a wicked, wicked glitter in her eyes. Teddy absolutely does not want to know what has caused it.

“Here,” he says loudly, “I have some champagne. I want to say thanks. This would have taken me days on my own and I’d probably have ended up hanging the rugs on the wall by mistake.”

He pulls it out from the small fridge he’s got for bottles—just for bottles! He feels fancy as _fuck_ —and snares some champagne flutes from the cupboard.

“Well, well,” comments Dominique, swanning over to help him lay them out on the side, “Isn’t _somebody_ going up in the world?”

“D’you want it or not?” Teddy demands, bumping her hip with his own. She shoots him a quiet, smug little grin and holds a glass up.

Even Lily takes some. Ginny manages to grab it off her, but Teddy sees Victoire slip Lily her glass out of the corner of his eye when Ginny’s back is turned. Lily tips it back in one go, has a coughing fit, and manages to look mostly innocent when her mother turns to glare at her. Despite the watering eyes, she mostly pulls it off.

“Well, we’d better go,” says Ginny later, when the champagne is mostly gone and Dom has got all giggly, “We’ve got to be up early tomorrow.”

She fixes her daughter with a beady eye. Lily has curled up on the sofa with Louis, both of them drowsy with alcohol. Louis keeps shifting like he wants to move away but hasn’t got the energy.

Lily barely puts up a fight when she’s pulled off the sofa, which is a new thing for her. She leans in to mutter something to Louis, who goes a bright and unexpected shade of red, and then allows her mother to drag her out of the room. Teddy can hear her laughing all the way down the stairs.

“That girl,” says Victoire with a shake of her head, and collapses onto the sofa besides Louis. Louis, still glowing scarlet, says nothing.

They all leave after another hour or so. Young Molly insists on showing Teddy round the kitchen before she goes, and Teddy maybe watches her more than he watches where she’s pointing.

He ends up having to clear up by hand, just to get used to where everything goes and all the spaces between things (he really does not want a repeat of the time he tried to spell some crystal wine glasses back into a cupboard at Percy’s house, misjudged badly, and smashed two against a door frame).

Then he goes to bed. It’s _weird_. There’s so much more space in this flat. The curtains actually keep the light out, and there’s a warm carpet to sink his feet into when he gets up to go to the bathroom. Everything feels clean and warm and…grown-up.

He thinks he likes it an awful lot.

 

*

 

He settles into an easy routine over the following months. He gets up in the morning, makes himself coffee using the machine he was given as a moving-in present by Ginny and Harry, drinks it in his chair by the window and then heads out. He grabs a pastry from the café downstairs for breakfast and eats it on his way to the park. Then he sketches for an hour or so to warm up, and finally apparates to the Potters’ to start drawing Lily practising her OWL spells. Some days he and Lily cook dinner together after a long day drawing.

It’s all rather charmingly domestic.

 Teddy is finding more and more that he looks forward to spending time with Lily. He’d thought that perhaps that day wrapping Christmas presents was a fluke, but the truth is she kind of fascinates him. She’s off-the-wall and zany, as quick to turn on him as to praise him, and she hasn’t met a boundary she didn’t end up pushing.

But she’s funny, and oddly sweet once you get past all the bluster, and there’s something kind of awesome about discovering the person she’s becoming. Sometimes it scares him, but mostly it leaves him slightly in awe. He used to babysit her, after all, and now here she is making sex jokes and having a go at him for laughing at her when she yells at him for being a jerk, and generally just—being _her_. Being this whole developed person, however bizarre, when she was such an inchoate little thing.

“You know,” she says to him one afternoon. She’s flopped out on her back on the sitting room floor, still in her pyjamas, absently twisting her long hair into plaits.

“I know what?”

“Well, it’s just that—do you really think I’m off-the-rails? I mean, like, properly.”

Teddy pauses. He’s been filling out a sketch, improving the lines, but this feels like it requires his full attention.

“Do you want to be?”

She frowns. “I don’t know. I mean—it’s really fun, don’t get me wrong. But…I kind of miss how it was before. Before all of…I don’t know. This. Albus and Scorpius fighting, and James—it’s just. You know?”

“Sure.” This is a lie. Teddy has no idea what she’s talking about. But this seems like a confession she needs to make, so he’s going to go along with it for as long as she needs.

She sits up suddenly. The strap of her top slips down her shoulder and she pushes it back up without thinking. She’s still frowning, red brows drawn down, her eyes very serious as she stares at Teddy.

“Rose told me,” she announces all in a rush, “She told me last February that she’d seen something about me. You know she does that, sometimes?”

Teddy didn’t, but he waves at her to continue anyway.

“Yeah, so, anyway, she said she saw that I was going to be unhappy. She said desperately unhappy. And I thought—well, I’m unhappy all the time. That’s not _new_ , you know? It’s just…being me. But she said it was something specific. Something that was going to happen. And I—at the time I thought probably she was just messing with me. We’ve never really got along. But she seemed kind of serious. And now—”

Her breath catches. Teddy realises, in a moment of horrified fascination, that she’s about to _cry_.

“Oh no,” is all he has time to say. She presses the heels of her hands hard into her eyes and heaves in this big, shaky gulp.

“I think I’m pregnant,” she mutters, not taking her hands away. The words come out thick and choked.

Teddy thinks he might feel his heart actually stop.

“Oh my god,” he says. He drops his pencil and just sits there and stares at her.

She doesn’t reply. Her shoulders shudder and he sees a tear worm its way out from under her palms.

“Oh my god, Lily,” he gasps, “Lily, you’re _fifteen_.”

Her hands come away. Her eyes are angry red, raw and defiant. “I fucking _know_ , Teddy.”

He casts around desperately for a responsible thing to say. “Well, have you told your parents?”

She makes a sound that’s halfway between a laugh and a cry of derision.

“Oh, sure,” she snaps, “I told my parents. My dad saved the world and my mum had two successful careers and three kids by the time she was thirty-five with no issues ever. I’ve _course_ I’ve told them I’m pregnant at fifteen.”

Teddy can’t think what to say. Lily heaves in this big, big breath and then wails, “I’m not even old enough to be on Sixteen and Pregnant!”

For some reason, this just gets Teddy. He stares her down for a moment and then, helplessly, he starts to laugh.

“Stop laughing!” she shrieks, but she already looks brighter. This is what she needed, Teddy realises. She needed to tell somebody and for it not to be world-shattering. For it to be, just a little bit, funny.

“Fuck, Lils, I’m sorry,” he says, “But, fuck me—seriously? That’s the issue?”

“Well,” she replies, her expression slipping towards the familiar wicked look she wears when she’s winding her family up, “Not the _only_ issue.”

“Oh, for god’s sake,” he sighs, and opens his arms up, “Come here.”

She bolts into the hug, winds herself into his embrace, and Teddy lets her tuck her head under his chin and curl up into him. Her breathing is already steadying. Here, without her staring him down dangerously, Teddy feels safe enough to start asking the grown-up questions.

“Have you taken a test?”

“No. But I’ve missed two periods and when I was in Diagon Alley last week one of those Hurdy-things went red when I passed. You know, the things that look a bit like seals with legs? In Care Of last year Hagrid said they do that when someone’s pregnant.”

“Okay,” says Teddy, deciding that this is as close as he’s going to get to confirmation for now, “Right. So the next thing to do is tell the father. I mean—do you want to do that?”

Lily doesn’t move for a moment. Then, slowly, she shakes her head. Her voice is very quiet when she speaks.

“I don’t want him to know.”

“Well, I mean, that’s your choice, but Scorpius would—”

“It’s not Scorpius.”

This flummoxes Teddy for a second. “Oh…right, okay. So, no-go on the dad. I guess—well, the next thing is for you to decide if you want it or not. ‘Cause we could get rid of it. I mean I’m not saying you shouldn’t tell your parents. But I’ll go with you to get an abortion if you need me to.”

“You would really do that?”

“What—Lily, yeah. Of course I would. I love you, yeah? You’re mad but I’ll be there for you, whatever happens. That’s what I’m _for_.”

There is silence, and then suddenly Lily’s wiry arms wrap tight around Teddy’s chest and _squeeze_.

“I love you too.” Her voice is tiny. She seems terribly young to Teddy all of a sudden.

He sighs against the top of her head and squeezes her right back.

“So do you want to do that? Get an abortion?”

“No.” She sounds hollow and angry. Somehow disappointed. “But I have to.”

Teddy thinks about what this news would do to Harry and Ginny. More, he thinks about what it would do to James and Albus—all that fire and fury that the Potter siblings have built around one another, this would give it a real and tangible enemy. He can’t imagine what it would do.

Mostly, though, he can’t help thinking about what this will do to Lily.

“I’m sure there’s a way, if you did want to keep it. I mean, your parents will be mad, but they’ll come around eventually. They’ll support you, you know they will. Even if they’re angry, even if they’re disappointed—they’ll be there for you. If you want it, Lils, I can—I’d help. If it’s what you really want.”

“I can’t. I don’t—it wouldn’t be right. I can’t keep it. Originally I planned to…well, I wanted it to be real. But now I don’t anymore.”

“Okay. Okay.”

 

*

 

He takes her to a clinic that afternoon, courtesy of a discreet phone call to Ben to ask about Muggle places they treat STIs (“The things I do for you,” he grouses to Lily, who’s been cracking up listening to his side of the call).

She makes him go into the appointment with her, and manages a wan smile when the doctor asks if he’s the father.

“Yes,” she says, deadpan.

“Ew,” interrupts Teddy, “God, Lily, don’t say stuff like that—I’m her cousin. I mean, practically. And I’m twenty-five, Jesus, that would be—I’m not the father. Not even slightly. No chance.”

“Okay,” replies the doctor, waving her hands in a placating manner, “Not the father. Got it.”

She’s nice, the doctor. A Muggle, so there’s no chance of this getting into the wizarding papers. She talks everything over with Lily slowly, carefully, ensuring there’s no risk of misunderstanding.

Lily is fidgety. She keeps flicking her gaze over to Teddy and he can’t decide whether it’s because she wishes she wasn’t here or because she wishes _he_ wasn’t here.

Eventually she cracks. “I have to—um, there’s something I think I should talk about. But, uh, Teddy, it’s—I’d rather you didn’t know this. If that’s okay.”

“Okay,” replies Teddy, non-committal, “No problem. I’ll be outside, alright? Come get me when you want.”

The doctor gives him a quick nod as he leaves, composed and professional.

Outside the room, Teddy settles himself into a chair and blows out a big, big breath. This is absolutely not what he thought he’d be doing with his afternoon. He can’t believe he’s been so calm about it. So competent. He’s really made the right decisions. Okay, so he probably should have told Ginny and Harry anyway, but—it wouldn’t have been right. Not with Lily trusting him like this.

The situation is tense and the afternoon has been stressful as all hell. Teddy thinks he’s too amped up to ever sleep again, but true to form his eyes are drooping within minutes.

“Teddy?” Lily startles him. She’s coming out of the doctor’s room, pale and cross. He can see anger all over her.

“Hey,” he says, instantly preoccupied with the look on Lily’s face.

“What happened?”

“I’m booked in,” she replies, pushing past him and striding off down the corridor, “Two weeks. I have to go to the hospital.”

“What, now?”

“No, fuckhead, for the abortion. _God_.”

“Hey.” Teddy reaches out and grabs her shoulder. He twists her to face him and gives her a gentle shake. “Don’t get arsey with me. I’m trying to help.”

Lily’s eyes are trained on the ground. Her shoulder is tense under Teddy’s hand.

“Fuck off.”

Teddy shakes her again, harder this time. “No. I won’t. You got me involved in this, Lily, you don’t get to push me out now. And don’t swear at me. It’s kind of pissing me off.”

She wrenches her shoulder out from under his hands and straightens her jacket. Her movements are swift, jerky, distracted. She’s practically trembling with whatever it is she’s keeping inside.

“You don’t know anything,” she tells him. “Not anything.”

“Hey, okay.” Teddy changes tack. His grip loosens and he puts his other hand on her shoulder. He draws her in for a hug, holding her tight against him, waiting for her to relax. She’s so stiff, like a marble statue. “Tell me, then. I’m a no-judgement zone.”

“You’d judge this.”

“Unless you’ve committed murder, I’m not going to judge you. Even then, actually, probably. We’re family.”

“Not really,” she says. Teddy goes still. She draws back and meets his eyes at last. She hisses the words out. Every part of her is venomous. “I mean, you’re not really family. Not by blood. Not properly.”

Teddy can feel anger bubbling up. He tries his best to tamp it down. This is what she wants—she wants a rise, a show of temper, so she can avoid telling whatever secret she’s keeping. She’s messing with herself more than him, trying to give herself an out that she doesn’t really want.

“If that’s how you feel, fine.” He can hear how clipped his own words are but he can’t make them softer. “I mean, it’s not very nice, but it’s fine. It’s your right. But I’m still not going to judge you, Lily, even if you make it really, _really_ hard for me not to.”

“I—” she cuts herself off. Her eyes are furious things. She punches her hands into the pockets of her jacket and kicks at the floor of the corridor.

“Okay,” says Teddy. He manages to make himself sound a little more gentle. “Here, okay, come in here.”

He pulls her into an empty room. It’s just storage, by the looks of things, full of boxes and filing cabinets.

“Right. Tell me.”

She still has her hands in her pockets. He can see the shape of her fists, balled tight.

“It’s family,” she bursts out suddenly, “I’m not saying you’re not family because I don’t like you, I’m saying you’re not family because that’s _good_. This family, it—it swallows everything. I can’t do anything but they talk about it for weeks, and then everyone else talks about it for weeks once it gets out, so it just goes round in circles for _months_. It all gets dissected down and reasoned out and rationalised and if they can’t rationalise it they twist it until they can and I just can’t _deal_ with it!”

“Breathe,” says Teddy, catching at her forearm, “It’s okay.”

“No, it’s _not_ okay! It’s not. I just can’t—no matter what I do, what I try, it all comes back to them. I have no clue who I am outside of them, Teddy. My friends, they—even they come back to my family in the end. Yell’s sister is James’ best friend, that’s how we made friends, and Sophie and Fee both fancy Albus, Clary and Fred definitely had a thing, and I’m at least ninety percent certain that Beth’s been seeing Dom behind my back. It’s like this huge gigantic web and I’m stuck in it. I don’t want to be me only by extension, you know? Like, if I’m me, it’s only because of my family. Does that make sense?”

Teddy doesn’t think it does, but he gets the feeling that that’s not the real issue here. “Lils, listen. What’s this really about? You love your family, don’t you? You’ve never talked like this before.”

“Of course I love them.” She drags one arm across her eyes roughly. “Of course I do, Teddy. God. They’re my _family_. But I—it all comes back to them. Everything is about them. I just want to do one thing that isn’t. I always thought—you know, I figured when I was thirteen that I could get pregnant and that would really show them. For all the other fuck-ups, nobody’s ever done that. And it would be something that wasn’t involved with them at all. It would be some random guy, completely unrelated, who didn’t have anything to do with this. And then there was Scorpius, and—okay, so, he’s still all tangled up but he’s separate, you know? And I thought he might do. But then—”

Teddy gets it suddenly. “Then Vic got pregnant, and suddenly it wasn’t a new thing.”

“Exactly! Now I’m just—what, a copycat? Second to everything, as usual. And I was so mad. I just…this big thing I thought I could do and she stole it. So I…”

“You what?”

She can’t look at him. She turns away, her face flooding red.

“So I did the worst thing I could think of. I wanted to—I don’t know, punish everybody. Punish Vic. And—well, so, the day you moved into your new place, when Louis and I left, we—that is, I—”

“Oh my god, Lily,” Teddy lets her go like she’s burned him, “please do not tell me that _Louis_ is the father?”

He sees shame wash over her. Being Lily, she moulds it quickly into anger.

“Oh, sure, I’m sensing the no-judgement zone _really_ strongly.”

“Lily, he’s your _cousin_.”

“I fucking _know_ , Teddy! I know, okay. I fucked up. I wasn’t thinking—I was so mad. So, so mad. And now he won’t even _look_ at me, and this is…this sucks. He was one of the only people in this family I could really talk to and I fucked it up and now you know and you’re looking at me like that and I—I don’t know what to do. I really, really don’t know what to do.”

Teddy can’t breathe. Of all the things, he never could have predicted this.

Lily’s sobbing suddenly, so hard it tears through her, makes her whole body shake.

“At least with Louis I knew it wasn’t because of Dad, you know? Like, other guys that touch me, it’s usually because it’s like they’re getting closer to the legend of Harry Potter. Like they can own something that’s his, and his—I don’t know, his hero thing will brush off on them. And with Scorpius, it was about Albus, still not about me. But Louis…it’s because he’s my cousin that I knew it was for me. Not because he wanted to get close to Dad or to anybody else in the family. Just because it was _me_. And that’s—I’ve never felt like anybody wanted me for that before. Not ever.”

“Oh,” sighs Teddy, reaching for her, “Oh, _Lily_.”

She lets him draw her in this time, pliant and yielding as a lamb. Teddy just holds her as she cries, feeling her tears soak into his sweatshirt, her slim wretched shape in his arms suddenly so vulnerable.

“It can’t go anywhere, Lily. It can’t be anything.”

“I know.” Her voice is snotty, thick with tears. “I know, I do. I don’t want it to. I just—it was so nice. To feel like that for once.”

“I know. I know.”

They stand there in silence for a while longer, Lily’s sobs slowing and Teddy moving his hand in slow, steady circles on her back.

At last, she is quiet enough that Teddy dares to say what’s on his mind.

“Lily, I think you should talk to somebody. Somebody who can help.”

“I can’t.” She presses her face harder into his chest. “What if they told? This would be everywhere. It would destroy Mum and Dad. It would—it’d fuck Louis up too. He feels bad enough as it is.”

“They take confidentiality vows,” Teddy points out gently, “Unbreakable Vows, lots of them. They couldn’t tell even if they wanted to.”

Lily says nothing, which Teddy takes as encouragement.

“I’ll find a couple for you to meet, yeah? I can ask around, pretend it’s for me. If they’re worth your time we can book you in. We don’t even have to tell your Mum and Dad, not if you don’t want to. We’ll say we’re doing stuff for the illustrations.”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t decide yet. Let me meet them first, yeah? Sound them out.”

Lily stays quiet for a while longer yet. And then, finally, she heaves out a sigh and says, “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

That feels like such a victory that Teddy doesn’t say anything more. He just hugs her, quiet and warm, until he feels her shaking stop.


End file.
